I've been asked this by a few people and I struggle with the answer. I'm interested to know how you all handle this question. There's two ways of looking at this question, and I'd like input of but of them.
One way of looking at this would be standards loosening. An example of this would be music. Many years ago, style of music were much more classical than they are today, both in Christian and in secular music. As the secular world has moved to rock and roll, the Christian style has followed, a step or two behind. What is mainstream in the world has become acceptable in Christianity because it is mainstream in the world. Is it ok that Christianity's standards have shifted because of the standards of the world?
On the other hand, standards have also tightened. An example of this might be drinking wine. In the old days, many Christians drank wine and were not convicted because there isn't really a Scripture that forbids it. But nowadays, with drinking so rampant in the world, it has become a standard of many believers not to drink at all, so as to remain separated from anything that the world is doing and so maintain their testimony.
I guess what I'm getting at here is the idea of separation and how it relates to our standards. Are Christian standards set in stone, or do they change because we are always to remain separate from whatever the world does? If the world suddenly turned around and started singing purely traditional hymns and started to act in all the ways that Christians did, would we be right to continue acting the same way, even though it would mean that we were not separating from them because we were doing the same things as they were, or would we be right to separate from them and start doing things that they weren't doing, even if they went against the standards that we hold to today?
I hope all this rambling makes sense. I welcome any comments.