Read this the other day, and it was too good not to share...

"Many in the wider culture do not share the stories and metaphors that shape us as Christians. Our Christian lives are lived on the border between the world into which we were born and another country, another city. The church is shaped by a vision of God's kingdom, the ordering of human life by an alternative vision. Christians belong to the church, the body of Christ, a community that confesses loyalty to Jesus Christ, who calls it to live a way of life that places Christians in profound tension with many of the fundamental values of the larger culture. Christians belong to an alternative culture - the people of God - a society not identical with family or citizenship. It is a specific community within the larger cosmic community of all being. Though Christians share a universal identity with all beings in the larger cosmic community of the heavens and the earth, and though they share many of the cultural identities with their fellow North Americans, their existence as citizens also makes them 'aliens' in their own country.

To put it another way, Christian existence involves polarities that pull us in opposite directions and sometimes seem like contradictions, yet must be held together in creative tensions."