We have, then, three distinct authorities:
- The Scripture, which is absolute;
- The laws of our land, which the Scripture has obligated us to obey, unless they compel us to disobey God; and
- Cultural expectations, because Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor and to live out his grace, mercy, and peace as ambassadors—again, short of disobeying the Scripture. We don’t pick our nose in public.
How do we rightly maximize obedience to all three?
We all know this isn’t easy.
One thing we do know is that some random blogger can’t make these decisions for us; the answers will come from our mind and conscience as informed by our personal interaction with the Scripture and with the Spirit—who, we should remember, never leads contrary to the Scripture, which he himself inspired. This means that we, as individuals, need to be serious about our study of the Word, hiding it in our hearts, and thinking regularly about how, specifically, it regulates our decision making. Your pastor, though his ministry of the Word can be part of your information collection, can’t give you a personal understanding of the Word; you have to do that for yourself.
Similarly, we need to develop our own determination that we are going to heed the Scripture regardless of the personal consequences. We can’t go through the hard decisions of life on someone else’s commitment to Christ; we have to be serious about our commitment to him personally.
Third, we need to know what we’re talking about. For example, on making a decision about a legal requirement, we face a problem: legal issues are often political issues, and politics is by nature filled with highly inaccurate information. Both sides in a political controversy want to maximize their following, and in most cases they’re perfectly willing to lie to do it. So they exaggerate the threat and sometimes they just make stuff up. Further, these days most journalists are advocates, not reporters, and they omit facts that don’t fit their goals and distort facts that do. That means that we need to go to original sources—yeah, we need to read the actual law to find out what it requires.
This principle of being accurately informed extends over into the cultural issues as well. We tend to overestimate the breadth of cultural expectations, to assume too quickly that “everybody’s doing it.” As just one example, evangelicalism in the US has moved from a general opposition to the use of beverage alcohol during Prohibition to more openness since. That move was expedited by increased ease of travel and consequent increased exposure to cultures where practicing Christians had not been influenced by the American Prohibition movement and had a long history of disciplined use of alcohol. So “everybody’s doing it.”
In my experience, though, that’s simply not true. Though I grew up in a culture where alcohol was common (my extended family was more the beer-drinking type than wine connoisseurs), I decided not to drink for a few reasons:
- I had a family history of alcoholism;
- My parents decided to quit drinking when they came to Christ in their 40s; and
- During a brief period of rebellion during my gap year after high school I found that I didn’t handle it well.
As an employee of my university, I’ve signed a statement that I won’t drink, but I wouldn’t drink even if I didn’t work there.
All this to make this point: over the years I’ve often been invited to share a drink, and I’ve always said, “No, thanks, I don’t drink.” And never—not once—has anyone given me any grief about that or taken any offense. In my experience, there is no real social expectation regarding alcohol. The culture does not in fact require that of its good citizens, and everybody’s most certainly not doing it.
So it helps us to be informed about what’s actually going on with the legal requirements and the cultural expectations. And of course, what the Scripture actually says.
Next time, some suggestions about how we make those decisions now that we have the facts at hand.
Photo by madeleine craine on Unsplash
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