I have been thinking
on something for quite some time now and it may just be time to share my
thoughts about it. This post may make
some people angry with me; they may think I have become liberal. They may decide to disavow me. But here goes nothing. I am tired of legalism. I am tired of people judging other people by
their own personal standards.
No, I am not leaving the Independent Fundamental Baptist “movement.” I am not becoming a liberal. I am not becoming a modernist. I have not moved in my beliefs. If anything, the IFB “movement” has left me.
Here is the thing I have been pondering. Why do we hold other people to our standards? Who are we to look at other people and say they are not as spiritual, as separated, or as holy as me, so they are not right with God?
Let us talk about a standard that people judge by-dress. That is an easy one. If someone does not dress exactly the way I
do, then they are a heathen. I challenge
you to go to the Bible and find a passage of scripture that gives a detailed
explanation of the proper wardrobe of a Christian. I’ll wait.
Have you found it yet? Spoiler
alert: you will not. The Biblical standard is not to wear this or
not to wear that, the Biblical principal is to be modest, as found in I Timothy
2:9 - “modest apparel.” The Bible
teaches us to be modest. What does
modest mean? According to the
dictionary, it means moderate or reasonable, not extreme. Our clothing should be reasonable, not flashy
or revealing. What’s reasonable to you
may not be reasonable to others. What’s
reasonable to others may not be reasonable to you and that’s okay. Over the years, there is one question I am
asked about our church repeatedly. “Do I
have to wear a dress at your church?” No.
Nope. Not at all. If you come to church wearing jeans and a tee
shirt, I’ll welcome you. If you come to
church wearing shorts and halter top, I’ll welcome you. If you come to church in a dress, I’ll
welcome you. If you come to church in
your pajamas, I’ll envy you a bit, but I’ll welcome you. Why?
It’s more important to me that you come to church than that you
come to church wearing a particular item of clothing. Your relationship with God is not defined by
your clothes, but by what’s in your heart.
People in glass houses should not throw stones. A great old saying that we have not applied
to ourselves as we ought to. Let me tell
you a story. Years ago, I was talking to
a fellow I worked with. He’s a self-professed
agnostic. We were having an
exceptionally good, very deep discussion on Christianity. At the time, I weighed about 275 pounds. He made this statement: “You are fat. How is your sin any different than my sin?” You know what, he was and is right. Gluttony is a sin. There may be circumstances beyond your
control that causes obesity, but in my case, it was gluttony. I realized that my testimony was tainted by
my weight. Shortly after that, several
things happened that caused me to determine to lose weight, and I did, praise
the Lord.
In Isaiah 6, Isaiah saw the holiness of God and the first
thing he did was look at himself.
Not others. He said, “woe is me.” He judged himself as undone and unclean. We are experts at picking others apart while
ignoring our own faults and failures. It
wasn’t until Isaiah got himself right that he began to worry about others. He said first, woe is me, and then he said I
live in a land of unclean people. Point
of interest: Isaiah realized that he and
the rest of Israel were all in the same boat:
unclean, in need of God’s grace. He
didn’t feel better than them because he was closer to the Lord.
How about John the Beloved Disciple? In his epistles, he writes to the “fathers,
young men, and little children.”
Why? Because he knew not all the
believers had grown into the same levels of maturity. He was showing them grace. He was giving them grace to grow. John was not critical of the “little children.” He didn’t say that they should be as spiritual
as him, the beloved disciple.
We get the idea that if someone has been saved 5 minutes they
should be as spiritual as we are, or even worse, we get so focused on the
outside that we don’t give the Holy Spirit leave to work on the inside. We get out the white paint and paint those sepulchres
(Matthew 23:27), because they have got to match our whited sepulchres.
Jesus Himself told the Pharisees and scribes that brought
the woman taken in the act of adultery, that the one without sin should cast
the first stone. One by one, they all
dropped their stones and slinked away.
When the Light of the Lord shines on our sin, we realize we are not
worthy to judge one another.
Before we worry about anyone else, we need to make sure we
are what we ought to be. And let’s be
honest, we’re all fixer uppers with a lot of work that needs to be done.
