Part 1 | Part 2 

Once we’ve invested the time and effort it takes to be informed about what the Scripture says, and what the law requires, and what the culture expects, we need to get down to the business of making decisions about how we respond to specific demands from those authorities. 

We tend not to do well when we make snap decisions. Many decisions about these matters—especially the most important or significant ones—are complex and require us to think through extended arguments pro or con. That takes time, effort, and discipline. 

Add to that the fact that social media is formulated in such a way that it discourages us from complex thought (I’ve written on that here), and we’re temperamentally and intellectually disinclined to spend that time and expend that effort. We have to fight against our own inclinations and those of our peers. 

By the way, this ability to think through complex problems to a proper application is called “wisdom” in the Bible, and it’s highly commended and recommended there. Start with Proverbs. 

So. What process do we follow to arrive at a wise decision when authorities appear to be in conflict? Let me suggest one that works for me. 

• First, gather the data. Make sure you know what you’re talking about. 

• What does the Scripture actually require? 

• What does the law actually require? 

• What does the culture actually expect? And how broadly pervasive is that expectation? 

Often I find that at this point there’s no actual conflict; I can figure out a way, sometimes requiring a little creativity, to satisfy all the authorities. I find that Christians are often too quick to pull the trigger on civil disobedience or offensiveness to the culture—or disobedience to the Scripture in order not to be offensive to the culture. 

• Next, determine the importance. Do you actually have to make a choice? Proverbs—that book of wisdom—says, “He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, Is like one that taketh a dog by the ears” (Pr 26.17). Not every controversy is one you need to take sides in; and that’s especially true in a culture where various media outlets raise their ratings, and consequently their ad revenue, by serving up The Outrage of the Day, every day, and sometimes more frequently than that. 

• Now, if you’ve decided that you need to act on the issue, it’s time to give thought to the way you act. Harsh confrontation, complete with your shaking your fist in someone’s face, need not be your first choice—and frankly, I’m not sure it’s ever a proper choice, especially given Jesus’ words about turning the other cheek (Mt 5.39) and Paul’s words in his letter to the Colossian church: 

Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man (Co 4.6). 

And a few further considerations: 

• What is the Authority Priority? I’d say we obey the Scripture first, then the law, then the cultural expectation. 

• What response best reflects Jesus’ thinking and behavior? Yes, that can be difficult to determine: he overturned tables in the Temple, and later he stood silent before his accusers and took their beatings. And there’s theology to consider behind both of those responses. 

• How will your response affect others, both regenerate and unregenerate? Paul talks directly about the importance of protecting the conscience and edification of a fellow believer (1Co 8.4-13; 10.23-31), and Peter speaks of the importance of avoiding unnecessary offense in the communication of the gospel, “with meekness and fear” (1P 3.15). 

• A sobering consideration is this: though you will never have to answer to God for your sins—Jesus’ cross work has taken care of that—you will one day give an account to him for your stewardship, your use of the time and characteristics he has given you. He can’t be fooled, and he’s not likely to be happy with casual or slipshod decision-making on matters of obedience. 

So. Navigate the tensions between authorities carefully, thoughtfully, with grace toward all, with joy for Christ’s companionship, and with the confidence that comes from knowing who wins in the end. 

Photo by madeleine craine on Unsplash

Part 1 

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

We Christians find ourselves in an odd situation.

To paraphrase Jesus, we are in the world, but not of the world (Jn 17.15-16). He has sent us into the world (Jn 17.18) to be his ambassadors (2Co 5.20)—that is, to represent him well by living out his grace, mercy, and peace, and by spreading the message of the gospel to the ends of the earth (Mt 28.18-20).

Now, that means that we are to be different from the world and to make that difference plain—as Israel did under the Mosaic Covenant by intentionally not behaving like the cultures around them. They didn’t round the corners of their temples (Le 19.27), or wear linen mixed with wool (Le 19.19), or plow with an ox and an ass together (Dt 22.10). But at the same time we are to be “in” the world, representing God’s love, grace, mercy, and peace as well as his holiness, purity, and justice.

And God further emphasizes the idea of being “in” the world by saying that he has placed the earthly authorities in their positions and that we are to obey them, seeing them as agents of God himself (Ro 13.1-7).

So we serve God, obeying his commandments, and we obey earthly authorities, and we represent a good and kind God in the culture where he has sovereignly placed us.

We might expect, then, that occasionally these authorities will bump into one another. There are biblical mandates, and we must obey them. There also legal and cultural mandates and expectations, and we should do our best to accommodate them, to the extent that they don’t bring us into conflict with what God wants of us.

I’ve written before, and at more length, on Paul’s passages on this subject: 1 Corinthians 8-10 and Romans 14. But here I’d like to comment a little further on making decisions, sometimes hard ones, on practical matters.

There are clear biblical commandments. The big two, according to Jesus, are to love God and love your neighbor (Mt 22.37-39). We always ought to obey those.

But we know that there are some biblical commandments that we must not obey. The entire Mosaic ceremonial code—priesthood and sacrifices—has been fulfilled in and by Christ, who offered one sacrifice forever (He 10.12), and we would be wrong to follow the Levitical sacrificial code. In this case, as time has passed, the biblical expectation has been completely reversed.

Further, we know that some of the Bible’s commandments were culturally based. As just one example, Paul commands that we greet one another with a holy kiss (Ro 16.16), and I’m not seeing a whole lot of that among the brethren, at least in the US. We understand that we ought to greet one another affectionately and sincerely, and here in the US that usually involves a handshake or a hug, not a kiss. Cultural adaptation.

Some interpreters bring this principle into passages in a more controversial way. Paul’s proscription of women speaking in the assembly (1Co 14.34), for example, they suggest was unique to the Corinthian situation; the women there were causing a problem by their speaking in the church, so Paul told them to give it a rest; but he did not intend this to be a prohibition for all his churches, let alone for churches today.

Now, I’m open to that possibility in the abstract, but proper hermeneutics calls for careful consideration of the context. And I note that

• Paul does not hint at any geographical limitation in the passage, nor does he describe any kind of misbehavior that elicited the prohibition;
• Paul makes similar prohibitions in letters to other churches, such as the one in Ephesus (1Ti 2.12), which is on a completely different continent from Corinth;
• And the reason he gives for the latter prohibition is not the behavior of the women in the Ephesian church, but the behavior of just one, and at the very beginning of time—the mother of us all (1Ti 2.13-14).

So I’d call that a legitimate principle—culture can indeed affect the application of a passage—but not textually indicated in this case.

We’ll continue this next time.

Photo by madeleine craine on Unsplash