The Real World: Carolina Cross Connection

MTV has a popular show called "The Real World".  The Real World involves 7-8 people living in a big house in a major city who all party, hook up, and get wasted.  Pop culture displays the "Real World" as a place full of drug use, materialism, and alcohol abuse.  Society teaches teenagers that the world is like this, and that these activities are totally acceptable.  MTV and the world I have been raised idolize celebrities who spend their time drunk, shopping, and other unproductive things.

Every summer I attend a camp called Carolina Cross Connection where I, and my friends, donate a week of our time working for underpriveliged citizens.  You spend around 7-8 hours a day working for a stranger that you didn't know before that morning.  Your main goal is to love the person you're helping and to show them the Love of Christ.  The Love of Christ is beautiful.  That Love is selfless.  The Love of Christ is giving everything, and expecting nothing in return.  When Jesus died on the cross for me, He knew I could never repay Him.  His gift was SO large that nothing could ever settle my debt to Him.  Yet His Love is free.  It comes at no cost, and everyone has His Love.

At the end of every day at camp there is a time to share about where you saw God that day.  On the last night everyone always says "I hope I continue to see God like this in the real world".  I sit there and think what is the real world?  Is the real world a place where materialism and sin rule, or is the real world giving God your all?  "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."  Romans 8: 37-39.  Tell me whats real?  A Love that will never fail you, or this world.  The Bible very clearly states that when Jesus returns you WILL lose all earthly treasure you acquired.  So when Jesus returns do you want to be clinging onto Him, or to the things that will be gone?  


I firmly believe we live in a fake world.  A world where we are taught to believe that those with the most are supreme, and the poor are worthless.  In the Kingdom of God, the first are last, and the last are first.  In the Kingdom of God we don't love for gain, we love because He first loved us.  So people say they spend 51 weeks a year in the real world, and one week in CCC world.  I disagree, I believe that I (who attends 4 camp weeks a year through J staff) live 48 weeks in a fake world, and I live 4 weeks in the real world.  The real world is spending every waking second of Your day with God.


So you tell me, which one is "The Real World"?

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