Matthew 6:24: No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love
the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye
cannot serve God and mammon.
Often throughout my life I have lived with others. I find this no great chore and have had many pleasant experiences dwelling with my fellow man. The only obstacle to domestic tranquility that I have ever found occurs when others revolt against the incense I am fond of burning. The pungent odor of cucumber or liquorish curls its way through the house to spots never intended. I find the aromas soothing but many find the incense disruptive if not irritating. So I have become accustomed over the years to mentally calculating how far away from certain places I could likely burn incense without anyone noticing or come to the conclusion that, alas, nothing shall burn despite my desires.
So it is also with my Christian faith. I go through the world sometimes openly professing and celebrating the love in my heart and sometimes hiding it. The odor is welcome in my church, but in most other avenues of my life people seem offended that I would introduce such a stench into their presence, you're lighting your heart on fire here? For them Christianity is a part time endeavor. When you aren't in church you should be just a consumer or just a citizen. But how can you be a Christian only part of the time? Should I forget God's grace when not within 500 feet of God's house? Are we all to be under spiritual house arrest?
Apparently I am not the only one concerned with how modern society views Christianity; seeking to deracinate and sublimate it to social norms and conventions where men and women alternate between their Christian values and their secular values based on temporal circumstance. This conflict was featured as part of a delightful discussion between journalist and theology scholar Elizabeth Stoker and author Nathan Schneider. A must watch.
While Stoker and Schneider occasionally drifted into intellectual heights outside my experience (I barely escaped high school with a diploma) part of their discussion really hit home. Emanating from her study of Radical Orthodoxy Stoker questioned why Christians were expected to also accept an entire additional secular moral framework given they already had one through their faith that could apply in totality. Being a Christian is not always easy, but it is simple when it comes to where morality springs from (hint: God).
For as Matthew notes, no one can serve two masters. And by surrendering their moral system of judgment to alternative systems, even momentarily, Christians would be trying to serve two masters. I don't see this as contradicting in any way Jesus' statement that Christians should "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Mark 12:17) because Christians can certainly render taxes and legal obedience to the government without surrendering their conscience and morality.
As hard as it may be to accept in our relativist world, some things can be determined as true and false. If you accept God's truth you must do so with your whole heart and never permit your values to be drained, diced, and dichotomized to fit secular society's expectations. Jesus is your savior or he is not. You are committed to living by his teachers and example or you are not.
In short, there are no part time Christians.
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