Excesses On Both Sides

It’s been a while — again — since I’ve blogged. Not a lot of significant events to blog about; life goes on. Will be going on vacation with the family in a few days, from this Thursday to next Tuesday… hopefully I’ll have lots of pictures to upload over the weekend and after returning.

I’m trying to convince myself to loosen up and post more often, even if it means there’s nothing particularly profound to say. Not that I advocate mindless posting, and won’t be using this blog space for that, but at the same time there’s nothing wrong with a more conversational or “status update” sort of post every now and then. So with that in mind I hope to begin a more frequent cycle of posting.

Tonight, though, I’m going to still have to get into weighty matters that may end up only being read all the way to the end by one person (me, when proofreading). Nevertheless, I do have something on my mind that’s not really formulated into a precise, logically-organized post, but is still something I want to comment on. I’ve written numerous posts on the topic of freedom, especially in contrast to legalistic fundamentalism; this is a topic I still stand by and think is important to promote. At the same time, I’ve seen a lot of former fundamentalists who experience freedom and then “go too far”, leaving legalism to go smack-dab into licentiousness. This does not by any mean say that the fundamentalists are right and the rules are necessary, but also does not excuse living loose just because one is freed from bondage, as all that has really happened is one has traded bondage to rules for bondage to sin. One isn’t better than the other, and both are wrong.

Yet it seems our natural response to a wrong is to go too far the other way. American evangelical legalism and its rules largely stem from a response to the perceived demise of the culture due to so-called vices such as alcohol, gambling, sexual promiscuity, etc. in the latter part of the 19th century. So the “protective” move was to ban drinking (Prohibition in the early 20th century), discourage playing cards (even with no money on the line just due to the so-called “appearance”), oppose dancing, etc. Of course, history has shown that these new “rules” weren’t all that effective, and for many people adherence to these rules became the measuring stick of who’s living right and who’s living wrong. (Those and probably hundreds of other rules we made for each other so as to be able to rise above the rest by our painstaking law-keeping.)

More recently, as teaching on free grace continues to make a welcome resurgence in churches, people have realized the futility of painstaking law-keeping as a means of earning favor and have also come to appreciate things that are not wrong in themselves if used rightly. They realize that they have been set free from earning favor by keeping laws we’ve made for each other, and are free to live in a manner pleasing to God — but freely because sins are forgiven and God isn’t angry with them!

But there are some who hear that their sins are forgiven and then wrongly assume that it means that they can go do whatever they want and it’s okay because the sins they’re committing are already covered. This is blatantly wrong, but again, returning to painstaking rule-keeping is not the solution but rather wrong as well. It could be said, though, that the one who abuses grace in this way does not truly understand what it means to be set free and thus is still in bondage to sin.

The key is balance. That’s something foreign to us… we dislike rulekeeping, so we then approve sin. We get convicted of sin, and then we go back to rules to try to get right with God (and point out everyone else’s sins too). We show disgust at excessive greed in business, and then assume that socialism (i.e. greed in the form of centralized power grabs) will somehow be the right alternative. (Then eventually we’ll get sick of socialism and decide anarchy is a better option.) We realize that there are good elements of the culture which we can appreciate and redeem — so we don’t have to oppose all music and movies made after a certain year… and then go far beyond appreciating the good in culture to appreciating and loving its dirty underbelly as well, and not trying to influence it because we like it just the way it is. We come to the understanding that beer and wine are not prohibited by Scripture and rather are to be appreciated as good things in moderation… and then end up throwing off restraint and abusing a good thing to the point of getting sick. We rightly oppose false doctrine… and then get so cynical and postmodern we wrongly throw off all doctrine whatsoever. When both extremes are wrong, we need to look for what’s right when surrounded by two wrongs… in other words, balance.

But while a “middle of the road” position is healthy when it’s a right choice in the middle of two wrong extremes, we also have to be aware of cases where the “middle of the road” position is not necessarily right. If there’s something that’s clearly right and something that’s clearly wrong, the middle position ends up being not entirely wrong, but still wrong in that it’s not right. There are some issues where we say we’re playing it safe by taking a “middle of the road” position but in reality are simply compromising on a matter of right and wrong. Reasons for this vary, whether it’s uncertainty, a desire to not offend anyone, bad memories of black-and-white legalistic fundamentalism… but nonetheless, a compromise between right and wrong still remains wrong. Furthermore, it seems that often someone who stands in the “middle of the road” when a moral issue is at stake really ends up either standing for nothing at all, or else lending silent approval to the wrong.

So there’s a time when “middle of the road” moderation is the right choice (when it’s in between two extremes), but there’s also a time when it’s wrong (when it’s a compromise away from a clear right, but unpopular, choice). The solution to knowing isn’t any ten-step no-fail recipe (notice how there’s really no seven-step programs to anything in true Christianity?) but rather something that we must find, guided by Scripture and the Holy Spirit.

That’s all for tonight. I realize that’s probably longer than anyone wanted to read, but rest assured not every post will be this long. This just seemed like something that needed to get said.
Until next time… jn