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The word legalism is a religious weapon used to define the distasteful constraints of Christianity. It could be described as a pop-Christian term that for those readers who haven't encountered the church may not be familiar with. Unfortunately its the suffocating, constricting, shrinking poison that makes the stars look a little dimmer, the mountains a little smaller, and that body of people who bind together to form "the church" look a little more depressing. The tragedy of legalism is its invasion into every part of Christianity. The term seems to always be associated with fundamentals or traditional Christians, but its a widespread disease infecting all people who follow Jesus.
Anytime we say something is supposed to be one way (churches should be ______, Christians should be _______, missions should be ________, worship should be ________) we exclude something else, immediately creating our own law. Its easy to criticize the American church for its ridiculous spending on lavish auditoriums, its easy to say all people should move to the third world for missions, its easy to describe worship as a noun, not a verb, and often the most guilty Pharisees are the idealistic young people who in their desire for the core of Jesus' teaching, discard components of creation they don't understand.
Men and women are great examples, because in America our views of masculinity and femininity are characterized in very external ways. Cowboys and cheerleaders, muscles and curves. Trying to say "God designed _______" a certain way, whether it be relationships, institutions, or even nature, we imply the death of God. Legalism implies God is gone, no longer creating...he laid out a design, which has miraculously evolved and is coincidently aligned with the current generations ideology.
But this is not true.
God CAN move the mountains, he IS moving mountains and creating stars. With all the movement of the galaxy, it would appear He has little time to nit-pick about the specifics of his design who is missing the point, so why should we continue to explore the "right way?" A fruitful action would be to explore the ever evolving creations of the relationships, nature, and evolving artistic endeavors of God.
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3 comments:
Surely, though, we can look to the Bible and to God's continual revelation to discover absolutes! By saying that "God designed____ a certain way" implies the death of God, then revelation (and absolutes) are relative to each human experience. Then we become the measuring rod. Human experience of the divine becomes the standard for religious truth, a la William James.
The important distinction is that Christians do believe in the Bible and so they believe some things are designed a certain way by God. The issue is those principles are very few relative to the ones created by man that may have ties to the Bible, but are viewed through a cultural lens. For instance, in America we are very systematic about things and so we build structures like Sessions, we have literal education systems on how to be a church leader, we require a level of education to give communion, and these are based on the Bible, but are NOT absolutes. If they were removed, God's vision could still exist, AND when they are present his design also exists, therefore we have to be careful not to be too attached to these ideas, and we have to be careful not to waste time trying to destroy them either, because they distract from serious matters like poverty and community.
OK, for clarifications sake:
You said that saying "God made ___ a certain way" implies the death of God.
But only sometimes, when it is something not viewed through a cultural lens (such as Sessions)?
I realize that the article is an editorial, and meant to be provocative, so know that I'm not merely trying to be argumentative. But you weren't just talking about cultral constructions (ie, institutions) but about relationships and nature as well--things that ARE discussed definitively in the biblical texts, and they are discussed in terms of absolutes.
Shouldn't we be attached to biblical ideas about nature? Shouldn't the understanding that God created the world, and it was good, but we screwed it up with sin? And, even more importantly, shouldn't we be attached to an understanding of God's redemptive action in history? In a promise of a kingdom here but not yet, and in a promise of a new heaven and a new earth?
By saying that God DID design the world in a certain way and is redeeming it, absolutely, gives us a foundation upon which we can live and act in the world.
Love (so you know there's no animosity :-)),
Mike
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