Too often, when confronted with immorality, people retreat from the world around them, trying as hard as they can to avoid all reality of immoral things in order to stay "pure" or "holy" in their minds. I don't think that being in the world but not of it means isolationism.
When someone tries to live a PG life in an R-rated world, they decieve themselves and look rediculous as well. Acting as if there are not things going on in the world that are offensive, violent, and just downright evil is purposely blinding oneself to the truth. Nowhere is a follower of Christ ever called to self deception. If anything we are called to face the truth, no matter how brutal it is.
Any person who looks at the world as it is and acknowledges that people are making bad decisions that hurt themselves and others all the time will look at someone who reduces his or her world to family and a few close friends as odd. When people pretend that the world is not so bad by limiting their interaction with the world, they loose touch not only with reality, but also with people who live in reality.
If you want to escape the R-ratedness of this world, retreat is not the method that will free you. Chuang Tzu said that the great masters knew the difference between internal and external. When you know yourself and are true to yourself, you can live unviolated by the evil things in the world. The journey to living a clean inward life begins for me with "nosce te ipsum." Know thyself.
