Part 2 - “What’s Your Definition of Legalism?"

Last time, I identified three aspects of legalism as any practice or activity that:

  1. God has used in my life which I then expect other believers to follow

  2. I feel compelled to do to enhance my relationship with God and which, if I don’t do, will jeopardize my standing with him

  3. Fans my spiritual pride or causes me to look down upon those who are less “spiritual’

And I promised to amplify these thoughts this time with comments on how misunderstanding context and culture or misreading Scripture can make the legalism problem worse. This happens in at least four ways:

  1. Elevating “non-essential” doctrines or opinions to the level of undeniable truth and judging other Christians who disagree.

Theologians often categorize Christian beliefs into three levels:

  • Level 1 – Things over which there can be no compromise, such as the Trinity, Jesus’ deity, his virgin birth, the fact that his death and physical resurrection are the only provision for forgiveness of sin, and the recognition that Christians should be baptized and participate in communion.

  • Level 2 – Doctrinal differences of opinion, such as the appropriate age for baptism (infancy or adulthood), the mechanics of baptism (sprinkling or full immersion), the frequency of communion (weekly, quarterly or “whenever”), or the “theology” of communion (whether Jesus is physically present in the bread and wine, whether he is spiritually present, or whether they are just symbolic elements). These are issues around which denominations appropriately form.

  • Level 3 – Opinions, such as whether it’s OK for a Christian to buy a Lamborghini, what type of music is best for worship, or whether a church should go into debt over a building program. Although Scripture contains helpful principles to think these things through, there are no verses giving specific answers.

It’s perfectly fine to develop strong theological positions. However, they become problematic when you insist that every Christian agree with you on every point. When people “sanctify” their Level 3 views on clothing, hair styles, music preferences, etc., legalism thrives. In their terrific book How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth, Gordon Fee and Doug Stewart observe:  “ . . . there is no such thing as a divinely ordained culture” (page 85).

2. Getting so caught up in defining every last possible sin that your distinctions become laughable:

  • Some Christian groups prohibit going to the movies “because you are supporting the evil Hollywood movie industry.” However, they allow watching the same movies once they hit TV. Really?

  • Some who forbid all alcohol say you shouldn’t even drink a Coke at a social event because “how does an observer know you don’t have rum in your Coke?” Water is the drink of choice. To that I would ask, “How does an observer know that it’s really water and not vodka?”

  • Writer Phillip Yancey recalls during his school years walking the halls of his Bible college – which forbade facial hair on male students – seeing portraits of renowned professors and school leaders from bygone eras sporting full beards.

3. Applying some New Testament commands literally while ignoring others and judging Christians who don’t obey the ones you latch onto. For example, based on Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 14:34 (“Women should remain silent in the churches”) in some Christian circles, women are not allowed to hold pastoral roles that involve public speaking. However, since Paul also penned 1 Timothy 2:9, to be consistent, these same people should forbid women from wearing expensive clothing, gold or pearl adornments, or elaborate hairstyles. I have never seen “jewelry police” at the sanctuary door. Furthermore, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:13 that it’s improper for a woman to pray with her head uncovered. Very few Protestant churches require this.

Ironically, in the late 1960s, when “hippie culture” was beginning to flourish, many of the same Christians who ignored 1 Corinthians 11:13 about women covering their heads while praying invoked the very next verse (“If a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him”) as “proof” that God condemns long hair on men.

Other practices which Paul presents as commands, but which are often ignored include:

  • Drinking a little wine for the stomach – Some ban all alcohol.

  • Greeting each other with a holy kiss – Pretty much unheard-of in Western churches.

  • Not prohibiting speaking in tongues – Some denominations forbid this practice. 

4. Basing some prohibitions on a misreading or misapplication of Scripture. I ran into this as a newbie when I heard an older Christian admonish a mutual friend to put down his beer. “You’re making me stumble,” he said, invoking Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 14. If you flip to that passage, you will see Paul is discussing a particular practice – eating food that had been previously sacrificed to a pagan idol – and concludes that, although there is nothing inherently wrong with that action, a newer and “weaker” Christian could become confused by seeing such behavior and stumble in his faith. Ironically, rather than identifying as the “weaker” Christian, the person urging our friend to not drink “because it will make me stumble” is implicitly claiming the high spiritual ground.

These four factors play into the discussion of legalism in my last post and make the problem worse.

I am not in any way implying that the Bible is not helpful for teaching us how to behave, but we must carefully understand the context of these instructions so we don’t come up with questionable or inconsistent applications. And I am certainly not saying that, when it comes to our actions as Christians, “anything goes.” We are to pursue holy lives that honor God, but we should not do so in ways that elevates certain applications of biblical principles to absolute truths when there may be other equally valid ways to follow those principles.  

What do you think?

A Great Idea to Help You Worry Less

To be human is to worry. Even the most optimistic people occasionally obsess over bad things that could possibly happen. I believe it was pastor Tony Evans who identified the important difference between concern and worry when he observed that I control concern, but worry controls me. He’s absolutely right!

I’ve spent more than my allotted time worrying, but I’ve also learned a couple of approaches that have helped me tame the worry beast. I will share one this week and another one in my next blog.

Absolutely everything in life carries at least some level of risk. Believe it or not, there is actually a clinical medical code (ICD-10 V91.07x) for a doctor to report burns caused by someone’s water skis catching fire. Think about that for a minute.

It’s easy to catastrophize the future and rush emotionally toward worst-case outcomes. One way to counter this is to analyze your situation and try to assess the true likelihood of the bad outcome materializing. Let me show you how this can work.

A few years ago, I was talking with a couple considering a trip to London. At the time, the city had just experienced its third terroristic bombing within about six months, causing the couple to reconsider their trip.

Let’s look at the situation more closely. Assume a pessimistic scenario where London would suffer one bombing a month (twice the then-current rate). That means that any given day has a 3.3% likelihood of an incident. If this couple’s trip lasted six days, statistically, they would have about a 20% chance of being in London on the day a bomb went off. The odds against being involved are clearly in their favor.

At 607 square miles, London is pretty big. Of course, bombers would attack high-traffic areas, but even it if only 10% is high traffic, that’s still 60 square miles – a pretty big area. In order to be directly affected when the bomb went off, our couple would visit the exact spot – within a few dozen yards of the bomb – inside the 60 square mile area. It’s hard to estimate, but the chances of them being at precisely the wrong location on the wrong day are very low.

Then you have to consider exact timing. Bombings happen in an instant. Terrorists would probably select a high-volume time, say between 10:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. – a period consisting of 720 minutes. So, there is only a 1 in 720 chance (slightly more than 0.1%) that they would be there the exact minute the bomb went off.  

It’s impossible to do a precise mathematical calculation of their risk, but thinking through the odds this way can yield an “order of magnitude” risk assessment and put the possibility of danger in perspective. In order for them to be harmed, they would have to be in the exact wrong place on the exact wrong day at the exact wrong instant. Is that possible? Sure. It’s also possible my skis will catch fire next time I go water skiing.

Anyone who has ever seen a University of Michigan football game at Michigan Stadium (“The Big House”) is overwhelmed by sheer capacity –109,901 fans – of the largest collegiate stadium in the country. Years ago while attending a game there, I remember thinking through the odds of a terrible outcome I feared and concluding that the likelihood of it happening would be about the same as me being the winner of one of three $100 gift cards given at random to someone in the packed Michigan Stadium. Seeing the sea of people in front of me help put me at ease, realizing how astronomically low the probability was. And, by the way, the dreaded thing never did happen.

Of course, there is always a chance of bad outcomes, but sitting down and actually thinking about the probability typically “defangs” the worry monster.

Next time, I’ll share another approach that has also helped me enormously. Stay tuned.

Part of the 109,901-fan crowd

Part of the 109,901-fan crowd

God Led Us to Buy a House in a High-Risk Fire Zone and on a Major Earthquake Faultline

(Please read through to the end. The bottom line on this story is probably different from we you are expecting.)

Unexpected Wrightwood snowstorm in November

Unexpected Wrightwood snowstorm in November

During the height of this summer’s California wildfire season, God clearly led us to buy a vacation home in the high fire danger zone of Wrightwood, California. As a bonus, our new house is also on the San Andreas fault. We learned about this property on a Monday, put an offer in the next Friday, and had it accepted three days later.

Are we crazy?

No, not really. Despite the breakneck speed and the risky circumstances, we immediately recognized this as a remarkable answer to several years of prayer. Both of our children’s families live in the Los Angeles area, and, since we live outside Atlanta, we have been seeking ways to be more involved in their lives.

Over the years, we thoroughly explored housing options in Greater LA, but the combination of extremely high prices and choking congestion left us seriously discouraged. Additionally, none of the areas we considered would have any draw for our kids, and we feared setting them up for guilt trips, making them feel obligated to “visit the old folks.” Furthermore, we hated the idea of leaving Marietta, GA, our charming city with a great small-town feel.

The Wrightwood house checks all the boxes:

  • It’s in an attractive mountain town close to both families and is literally four doors away from one of our son’s best ultramarathon running buddies.

  • Real estate costs in Wrightwood are about half of what they are in LA.

  • Our vacation house creates a “home base” for family gatherings and also serves as a weekend getaway place for our children.

  • This solution allows us to visit three or four times a year and yet remain fully engaged with our church and friends in Marietta.

I would say this whole experience is one of maybe half a dozen times in my life where God’s will was indisputably clear. 

You may think I’m relating all this to point to God’s great goodness to us. Certainly, this is an aspect of the story I’m delighted to tell. However, there is a far more important lesson here:  once God makes his will known, you must be all in with no looking back, regardless of the direction things ultimately take.

Our decision to buy the house set in motion hundreds of decisions, some of which took us well beyond our comfort zone. But if God was truly leading us, what else could we do but move forward and trust God?

As an example, there was a last-minute communications hiccup that left us without fire insurance for the first 18 hours we owned the house. Remember, we are in a high fire zone, and this was while the California wildfires were making national news every single day. Since we were 100% convinced that God was leading us to buy this house, that means everything – both positive and negative – that happened as fallout from this decision is, by definition, part of God’s will. Even if the house had burned down before the insurance kicked in, we would have to embrace that terrible outcome as part of God’s plan. In fact, ironically, it would probably have reinforced our trust in God’s sovereignty if it had been destroyed. What are the chances that a house that stood unscathed for 53 years would randomly burn down within a random18-hour period in 2020? We would have to believe that God had ordained that incredible timing.

Please don’t miss the significance of this perspective. If we are committed to doing God’s will and carefully and prayerfully seek to discern what it is, we must embrace all that results – even the parts we don’t like – as part of God’s plan.

In his awesome book Trusting God, Jerry Bridges drives home three powerful points about God:

He controls absolutely everything.

He love me completely.

He knows what he’s doing.

If you truly believe this, I defy you to come to any other conclusion than that we must embrace every downstream consequence of the decisions God leads us to as being part of his will.

Is Comparison Really the Thief of Contentment?

How many times have you heard that comparison will rob you of your joy? It’s easy to see how much others have and, consequently, become dissatisfied with your lot in life. In one sense, this observation is true. Our hyper-consumerized, FaceBook-fueled world bombards us with images of how successful, wealthy, good-looking, and popular everyone else seems to be. The problem, as Andy Stanley says, is that we compare our seemingly mundane lives to other people’s “highlight reels.” Everyone else’s life is amazing. Mine is not. Makes me feel like a schlub. 

Before the FaceBook world, we and many of our friends typically sent out Christmas newsletters, highlighting our families’ spectacular years. God blessed us with a couple of great kids, but there were a few years – especially the high school ones – that weren’t always awesome. Do you think we ever admitted that? Not on your life. All we spotlighted were our victories and successes. Eventually, I learned to read between the lines of others’ letters and figured out their lives maybe weren’t entirely unblemished either.

So, yes, we have been guilty of feeding into the “look how great our life is” trend. And we probably helped others’ contentment slip a bit by only presenting our “perfect lives.”

However, although it’s true that comparison can rob you of your contentment, comparison can have the opposite effect. Let me explain.

We tend to become jealous when we look up the “comparison scale.” But what happens when we look the other way, toward those less unfortunate than we are?

People on overseas mission trips are often shocked by being smacked in the face by abject poverty. In Manila, I saw entire families living in tiny cardboard and plywood shanties with raw sewage running past their “houses.” When our family went on a mission trip to Cuba when the kids were in high school, we worked with a church of about 200 members. I was stunned to realize that our family of four owned more vehicles – four cars, to be exact – than did all the members of that church combined.

I have friends from high school who have already suffered strokes, had hip replacements, endured cancer, and even died. I know people whose kids are hopelessly drug-addicted, mentally ill, or totally dysfunctional. And I even know people with kids who have committed suicide. What do I have to complain about?

When our daughter Stephanie was in high school, she took a prescription drug that resulted in second degree burns over two-thirds of her body. She spent 19 days in an ICU and nearly died three times. Nevertheless, as we saw other families in the ICU, we recognized how blessed we were. One young girl had lost a large part of her face to cancer. A one-year-old had rolled off a couch and was paralyzed for life. And some families never took their children home at all. When you look at people with circumstances far worse than yours, it’s easier to recognize how truly blessed you are.

My best friend Billy Burke describes himself as a “glass ¾ full person.” I love that! Of course, that’s technically illogical. The “glass ½ full, ½ empty” saying reveals whether your natural bent is toward the positive or the negative. What Billy is saying is that even when he sees a glass that’s only 50% full, his mental filter is such that he “reinterprets” the glass’s condition as even more positive than it really is. Nothing is robbing his joy!

So, even though comparison can steal your joy, having a mindset like Billy’s and looking “downward” on the comparison scale will actually remind you how truly blessed you are.

Which Body of Water Are You?

 
Dead Sea Salt Crystals

Dead Sea Salt Crystals

 

Last year, our church organized an awesome trip to Israel and Egypt. One of the many highlights was our visit to the Dead Sea, a distinctly quirky body of water. With an elevation of 1,412 feet below sea level, it boasts the lowest land elevation on earth. And since it’s 9.6 times saltier than the oceans, its water has an oddly oily feel and motivates the obligatory pix of people floating on their backs reading a newspaper. Dead Sea minerals are famous for their skin-rejuvenating properties, and we were delighted to discover golf-ball-sized clusters of salt crystals lining the shoreline. So, the Dead Sea is remarkable. But it has one problem.

It’s dead.

Because of the incredibly high salt concentration, nothing can survive in its waters, and no one lives along the shore.

By contrast, the Sea of Galilee is vibrant. During Jesus’ time, more than a dozen villages dotted its shores, largely because of its vital fishing industry. To this day, the Sea of Galilee is a living body of water that supports many industries, not the least of which is Christian tourism.

Both the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee are inland lakes, and both are fed by the Jordan River. So, why are these lakes so different from each other? Primarily because the Jordan River flows both into and out of the Sea of Galilee, while it flows only into the Dead Sea. In other words, the Sea of Galilee enjoys both an inflow and an outflow, while the Dead Sea has no outlet. This means that all the Jordan’s silt and minerals flow into the Dead Sea but have nowhere to go. So, the salt concentration skyrocketed over time as the water evaporated, resulting in a salinity that choked out all life.

The parallel to our Christian life is clear. If all we do is take in, and take in, and take in without a significant spiritual outlet, we become as dead as the lifeless Dead Sea. Many of you are currently serving in various ministry roles, but some of you may not be. One of the best ways to revitalize your spiritual walk is to begin serving others. Besides the obvious good it does for the recipients of your ministry, serving often forces you to stretch yourself to work outside your comfort zone.

I must say, some of my most exhilarating moments are when God uses me to have a profound impact on someone else. This is reminiscent of Jesus’ comment to his disciples after he ministers to the woman at the well in John 4. He had sent them to get some food, and they are surprised upon their return that he seems disinterested in eating. Referring to doing God’s will, he proclaims, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

So, if you feel spiritually stunted, consider how much you’re giving out compared to what you’re taking in.

But there’s another lesson to learn from this “bodies of water analogy.” Some people have only a trickle for an inlet. Perhaps the busyness of life, or disappointment with God, or any number of other factors have caused you to withdraw from or become indifferent to God. If so, you should seek sources of solid input:  worship services, Bible studies, men’s or women’s groups, solid Christian books, retreats, etc. And then as you are personally revived, find appropriate outlets that fit your gifting, passions and schedule.

So, which are you? The Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee, or a lake fed by only a trickle?