The Balanced Christian - Part Two

OK, where are we having trouble with balance in current Christianity. Well, some of these may not easily be pigeon-holed into the Pharisee/Saducee template we established, but others will. The ones that won't can be seen within the framework of ignoring part of the Bible's teaching while over-emphasizing other parts. And some unbalances are occuring because of wrong-headed interpretations of the text. But in the end unbalance is there.

Rules - This is ever a problem for Christians. One sects Pharisaical rules include no smoking (a practice not encouraged by me but still not directly addressed in the Word), no dancing (does this include exercising to upbeat Southern Gospel music?), or movie restrictions (six cuss word minimum with certain words being used once counting as six but at seven you must leave the theater in a rage and tell the teenager at the popcorn counter that he is a purveyor of utter filth). In another Saducaical sect, NC-17 rated movies are allowed as fine and dandy (its making an artistic statement after all and if its called art it must be unquestioned), you can engage in sexual sin just fine (as long as you love you each other, whatever that means to you), but you better show up at a radical environmentalist rally (after all Mother Earth is ruined by polluters and we must protest and dump our trash all over the park we are protesting in). The first three examples are rules added to the Bible while last three are, respectively, a fuzzy current culture inclination, a direct violation of the Bible, and a Pharisaical rule the Pharisees would have been proud these Saducees adopted.
The Bible has enough rules without any additions please. Biblical rules exist for our protection, holiness, and quality of life. Adding to the Scripture elevates the opinions of man to the level of God's commands and is thus SIN. Denying Scripture makes the opinions of man superior to God's commands and is also SIN.

Contemporary/Traditional Debates - This can be over music, worship styles, preaching formats, dress, and on and on and on. The Scripture gives great freedom to us in certain areas. Take music. We have no commands in Scripture regarding styles of music we have today because none of our styles existed during Bible days (even if the organ seems old enough to have existed in Bible days it did not). Bach, Bluegrass, Basie, Beatles, Bono, Brooks, Bubble Gum, Brunge (OK, its technically Grunge but my allliteration was doing well), Bagpipe, Bangles, Bananarama, Britney (music style, not train wreck lifestyle), Billy Ray, Brown, Billy Joel, Bosephus, Barnyard, Ballet (please don't I beg of you), Beach Blanket, Buffet, B-52, and other styles are all acceptable music styles within Biblical limits (though we are dead certain that if we ever find 3 Thessalonians there will be a prohibition against any song ever being sung to the tunes of "House of the Rising Sun" or "I Will Always Love You" or "Help Me Make It Through the Night" or "You Light Up My Life").
At the same time your fellow Christian is not evil or outdated because they don't like your taste in music. Though we are sure it is banned in 4 Thessalonians, you can sing a worship song in church to the tune of "Almost Persuaded" (of course there is an actual hymn of this name that is available to sing but right thinking people do not want to do this as this hymn moans, drags out, and sounds like a funeral dirge that makes you want to listen to the sound of nails scraping against a chalkboard to get some relief from hearing it). But, you can see that I lack strong feelings on this issue.
Anyway, if it glorifies God, sing it.

I shall cease writing on this subject of balance at this time as I've grown tired of said subject at this point. Perhaps I will write more about this in the future.

The Balanced Christian - Part One

Those who know me well know that I am an advocate of balance in the Christian life. What do I mean by this?

Remember when Jesus told the Disciples to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Saducees. They at first thought he was speaking literally but became aware that he was actually telling them to beware the false doctrines of both groups. What were there false doctrines? Boiling it down to its simplest terms the Pharisees were guilty of adding to the Scriptures a whole pile of rules and regulations that became the focus of their religion which blinded them to Christ. The Saducees took away from the Scripture certain things they rejected and thus were also blinded to Christ.

There is an important principle here. The Bible essentially teaches a balanced life for the Christian and whenever we add to or take away from the Scriptures we get unbalanced. Sometimes this is blatant: Did you grow up in a church that required a dress code for attendance at church? This was the yeast of the Pharisees as the Bible teaches no such dress code for church attendance - it was simply the preferences of men that were being enforced. Did you grow up in a church that tried to explain that the miracles of the Bible weren't really miracles but could be easily explained via natural phenomena? This was the yeast of the Saducees as the Bible was doubted.

For most evangelicals, the yeast of the Pharissees is a far greater temptation. If you are an evangelical you probably saw more of your church in the first example than in the second. However, the yeast of the Saducees is making a tremendous comeback through some of the emergent church teachers and their allies.

Most of us have a problem with a mixture of the two. We sometimes side with the Pharisees and sometimes with the Saducees making us guilty of both. Actually, when you look at it, both groups were essentially similar on the inside as both rejected Christ outright and, whether they wanted to admit it or not, they rejected God's Word as well.

This thing we are calling balance is very important. Sometimes inbalance is easy to see and sometimes it is not. Sometimes we accidentally invoke either extreme without meaning to do it. This comes primarily from focusing on parts of the Bible's teaching without focusing on the whole teaching of the Bible. While we may be sincerely trying to uphold God's Word, we actually undermine it through our unbalance, and thus get infected with the yeast. The Thinking Servant has been guilty of this at times and still occasionally has to repent when shown his error. Examples of some of these current day inbalances will be featured in the next column.