Last Christmas my husband Dave and I went for dinner with Dave's boss and his wife. Dave's boss, who is in his early fifties, started telling me stories about growing up in a Baptist pastor's home, and filled me in on the many things that he was not allowed to do as a PK. Among the prohibitions, if I remember correctly, were going to the movies, dancing, and listening to rock music. At one point I asked him, out of curousity, if he was allowed to go trick-or-treating at Halloween, and I was quite surprised to hear him say yes!
See, in my home growing up, movies, dancing, and rock music were all allowed, but trick-or-treating was verboten, as was anything to do with witches, ghosts, or anything remotely "spooky". My parents even went as far as pulling me from a local daycare as a small child when they found out that the daycare was teaching me songs about a ghost in the closet! Also forbidden in my family was "potty talk". It wasn't just the four-letter words that weren't allowed; my sisters and I were not allowed to say words like "pee", "poo", and "fart" as children. (Having said all this, my parents have relaxed considerably in both these areas and I know they were just doing what they thought was best. Still, it's sort of amusing to poke fun at my own upbringing from time to time...)
It's interesting to me how, just as families have their taboos, various church denominations seem to have almost cultural taboos on certain "grey areas". Baptists don't dance, charismatics don't trick-or-treat, Mennonites don't go to war, Adventists don't eat meat or drink alcohol, and Catholics don't use birth control. Of course those are generalizations, but you get the idea. None of these activities are blatantly prohibited in the Bible, yet it seems that each denimination has its own speicifc list of do's and dont's.
Even more interesting to me are the churches that claim to be "anti-religious", but that simply take away all the "old" rules and replace them with new ones. I can think of three influential Christian leaders who would all consider themselves to be against religion. In their churches, people could likely get away with things condemned by the old-school Christians- drinking, smoking, secular music, coming to church in grubby clothes, etc- yet one of these men wrote a book that asserts that true Christians must be pacifists, another said in his book that Christians must be involved in social justice and willing to live in voluntary poverty, and the third is known to preach extreme ideas about gender roles from the pulpit!
It seems like most Christians acribe to one list of rules or another, and, though most Christians are gracious enough to allow for differences, I feel that it is rather common for each one to believe that their list is the best one, that their set of convictions and freedoms is the one that is most in line with what is God's ideal for society at large.
And then, of course, there are the Christians who feel the need to force their views on various grey areas on everyone around them. I know I've met plenty of these Christians in my day, and have fallen victim to their tirades every now and then. In my almost 29 years, I have heard preachers demonize Time magazine, heard a guy in my youth group refer to a friend of mine as "Jezebel" because she was dating one of his friends, had a youth leader lay into my youth group for their music choices, had a friend tell me Jesus was not happy with me because I watched The Matrix, had another friend state that Mary Poppins is witchcraft (yup, you read that right), and had someone who goes to my current church lecture me for reading Twilight. All of these people were well-meaning, yet some of these incidents were extremely hurtful to me. My guess is that I am not the only one who has been hurt by another Christian who feels the need to tell them what they should believe in a grey area. It's extremely common.
The solution to all this seems fairly simple to me. As Christians, we all have the ability to communicate with God and to receive guidance from Him on the various issues that arise in our lives. So I would think that when a grey area arises, the first thing we should do is ask God what He wants us to do in that area. In this, we also must remember that what God asks us to do in an area of our life when we are 15 may not be the same as what He asks of us when we are 30. When I was a teen I used to not listen to mainstream music, now I have no problem with it for the most part. It would be easy for me to either say that I was wrong then or am wrong now, but perhaps what is okay for me now would have hurt me in a different season of my life.
The second thing we must do is dismiss any notion we have that says that all other Christians must adhere to what we feel God has asked of us within these "grey areas". Each one of us is a unique reflection of God's nature, thus we will all be given different passions and strengths, and God may ask one person to abstain from a certain thing while allowing it for another. A Biblical example of this is the contrasts between John the Baptist and Jesus. John was very removed from society; he lived an ascetic life and was considered very strange. Jesus engaged culture a little more; in fact He went to parties and turned water into wine, and was considered strange for very different reasons than His cousin! Was Jesus right, and John wrong? Of course not! John was doing what God had called him to do, even though his way of life looked very different from that of Jesus.
Similarly each of us will be asked to follow God uniquely. I may feel that it is acceptable for me to drink alcohol; you may choose to abstain. This doesn't make me right and you wrong, or vice versa. You may be extremely passionate about taking care of the poor in the inner city, or leading worship, or ending sex slavery in foreign countries. If I am not also passionate about those things it does not mean I am necessarily in the wrong; rather, perhaps I am simply passionate about something different, like youth ministry!
Dialogue about these things is good. Talking to one another about our passions may raise awareness and bring out the passions in others. Talking about our own convictions and freedoms will cause us to think more critically about why we do what we do. However, there is certainly a time to shut up and listen- to stop forcing our opinions and beliefs on those around us, and listen to what God wants from us- and then, ultimately, to do whatever we do out of love for Him.
Of course, that's just my opinion.
