(*This post is a follow-up to the last one, WINE: Is the Devil Inside?)
Amazing! My last post generated 10x the hits than any other post I published so far. I wonder why? I can speculate: “Hmm, maybe there are a lot of secret scalawags out there who are looking for biblical justification to keep sipping on their Rum? I know…I am being stalked by heretic hunters who want to take down another renegade liberal ‘wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing’ pastor? Or maybe people simply want to know what the Bible actually says about difficult subjects instead of just walking lock-step in man-made tradition?” Whatever the reason, the amount of perusers to my last post excites me. Not because I want to be popular; but as a pastor, I want people to think! Proper biblical interpretation and application are vital if Christians are to gain wisdom and understanding. God’s goal is for us to live as mature adults who are characterized by a “sound mind with self-discipline.” (2 Tim. 1:7) For far too long, churches had developed adolescent followers who make “fear-based” reactionary decisions…let me give you a hyperbolic example of what I mean (exaggeration for the purpose of illustration):
Let’s say you are a mom who is just trying to maintain sanity in a claustrophobic house with two highly active toddlers who are “driving you crazy.” While you are preparing “SpongeBob” Mac-n-Cheese on the stove for lunch, your phone rings in your bedroom upstairs. As the water begins to boil, and seeing that your kids are throwing Lego’s at each other in the living room, you have a very serious decision to make: “Do I run quickly upstairs to get my phone, or let it go so my kids don’t come in here and burn their fingers on the hot stove, or even worse, dump a pot of boiling water on their head?” Since you are a well-meaning mom, you make a split-second decision: “I know, I will tell my kids not to go into the kitchen at all because the floor is so hot ‘It Burns!’ Yeah, that will keep them far away from the stove.” So after you tell them how they will be fried to a crisp by just touching the kitchen floor, you run upstairs, grab your phone and happily answer it in time. “Mrs. Smith, congratulations, you won a 3 day all expense paid vacation to Scranton, Pennsylvania to visit Dunder Mifflin.” Yes, you finally won, and your little story worked! As you go back downstairs your kids are frozen in complete fear as they stare into the dark horror room called “the kitchen.” “Ahhhhh, it worked, my story will now keep my children alive for another five years. Now that is called responsible parenting!”
Or is it?
What happens when one kid notices that after they chased the kitten into the kitchen, it didn’t fry? “Hmm, Chocolate Puff is still alive? Maybe the kitchen floor isn’t that hot after all.” So out of curiosity, your child touches a bare toe on the linoleum floor, and, nothing happens. He then bursts into the kitchen and starts running all around realizing that they are survivors! In their little brain they wonder, “Maybe, just maybe, mommy was not telling me the whole truth? Or she doesn’t know how invincible I am?” And then your child becomes convinced of their new super-powers of survival; they then see water bubbling on a cool orange glowing circle as a new challenge, and think to themselves, “Mommy told me not to touch that either…but I will survive!” Not good!
Ridiculous story, I know, but it uses the same kind of logic many people in the church have been raised on in order to avoid the dangers of this world:
* Mixed bathing is a no, no. It leads to touching and touching leads to …
* No movie theatres because you are promoting the Hollywood lifestyle and everything that goes with it. Do you want to fund Sodom and Gomorrah? “Well, didn’t you just have me over to watch the “Avengers” on DVD?” Yeah, but that is different…
* Dancing leads to swaying which leads to hugging which leads to grinding which leads to ….
* You may have the sort of tongue that once it touches a drop of alcohol, your eyes glaze over and you turn instantly into a person with an unstoppable addiction, and soon you will become a night-stalking zombie craving drink upon drink…
* Rock n Roll has drumbeats that come from the jungles of Africa, which leads to pagan demon worship, and leads to….
* Hanging around Calvinists will cause you to stop loving people and see life in categories and boxes, and you will only grow tulips in your garden….
Do you see how we have been taught to make decisions out of fear? Fear makes us stupid, there is no way around it. God has given us the mind of Christ, he has given us the power of the Spirit…what shall we fear? Some of you are saying: “Yeah but you are a leader and we must set up boundaries to stop impure behavior.” But here is my problem with that statement: what happens when our boundaries are not biblical and a person steps over them and realizes we were not accurate? Well, sadly, sometimes when we finally do teach biblical truth, it is ignored and treated as another false boundary.
That is why I believe hell is no longer feared! Because rock music, movie theaters and alcohol weren’t as hot as we previously warned; and maybe, just maybe, hell won’t be so bad after all?
