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Balancing Act: Pursuing Personal Righteousness, Part 1

Memories, Like the Corners of My Mind

I have a memory from my childhood of a particular woman from my church recounting how the church she attended as a young lady strictly forbade women from wearing makeup. I always found that a bit curious. My young mind couldn't quite understand why anyone would impose such arbitrary rules, and why other people would bother following them. I also remember the term legalism, or some variation thereof, being thrown around.

I'm sure we've all heard our share of legalism horror stories. OK, so maybe "horror stories" is a bit strong, but you know what I mean. Or maybe you've had your own experiences. Either way, you know it when you see it: people trying to live according to a set of rules because they believe, consciously or not, that their actions somehow improve their standing with God.

Research shows our generation recognizes legalism as a problem in the church. That's a good thing. But are we responding in the right way? In this first article of this two-part series we're going to discuss this problem of legalism and why we've rejected it. And then we'll take a look at how our generation of young believers has responded.

Old Skool Legalism

Legalism in the church goes back a long way, at least as far back as the very first generations of Christians. You may be familiar with the story from Acts 15 in which Jewish believers were telling their new Gentile brothers and sisters they had to follow the Law too, specifically the one about circumcision (so maybe this one applies only to the dudes).

Paul and Barnabas made sure to nip that one in the bud (pun!). They clarified for everyone that, yes, it's probably a good idea not to eat blood or food that had been sacrificed to idols or meat from animals that had been strangled. And — oh yeah — no philandering. As for circumcision and all those other Jewish customs, P&B said to the Jewish believers, "Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved."¹ Translations: Actions don't save; God's grace does.

Unfortunately, legalism still plagues us today. As wise old Solomon said, "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9, NIV).

What Do We Do with Legalism?

I finished a book recently called unChristian (it's one I'll be quoting from fairly often in this series). In it, author David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Research Group, talks about young non-Christians' perceptions of modern-day Christianity. His research shows that "[t]he most common message people hear from us is that Christianity is a religion of rules and regulations."² So, whether or not they'd use the term legalism, that's how non-Christians, or "outsiders," as Kinnaman refers to them, think of our faith.

But what are we younger insiders thinking about all this? According to Kinnaman, significant portions of young Christians, ones who regularly attend church, "raise objections to the motivations, attitudes, and image of modern Christianity,"³ legalism being one of the primary culprits.

Kinnaman goes on to say, "[Our research] does suggest that [younger] Christians face a generation of older believers who put a high priority on avoiding sin as a measurement of faith."⁴

Did you catch that? Avoiding sin as a measurement of faith.

Now, I'm not saying that, as Christians, we shouldn't avoid sin. Indeed we should, precisely because the Scriptures tell us to. James 2:17 says that "faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (NIV). Clearly, Scripture commands us to do the righteous life. But the pursuit of a less sinful life does no one any good when it's abstracted from its proper context, that is, doing it out of love for God and other people. It's unbiblical to believe God extends His love to us in greater measure because of our right living. That's getting caught in the legalism trap.

Not only is legalism a false, hollow way of pursuing the Christ-like life, it turns people into posers. When we hold ourselves up to unattainably high standards, we're bound to fail. But when our standard of who's a good Christian and who's not is based almost entirely on our behavior, we're tempted to pretend we're doing better than we really are. We hide behind façades of piety, which our non-Christian counterparts see right through. They hear us say one thing — and then they see us do another. And we lose whatever semblance of credibility we may have had with them.

Yes, legalism is a problem. And I thank God our generation identifies it as such. But are we responding in the right way?

Running from the Rules

When we humans reject something, we tend to do so pretty categorically. We throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak — we chuck the bad ideas, and the good ones too. Essentially, we fail to find any sort of balance.

That's what we're doing with legalism.

Our problem is, instead of pursuing righteousness for the right reasons, we've tended to reject it altogether. We've opted for licentiousness, which is to say we go about doing whatever we please.

I think you know what I mean. But let's not rely on mere anecdote. Kinnaman says that "young believers are struggling with issues of purity. Mosaics and Busters [that is, the two generations that comprise Kinnaman's 16- to 29-year-old cohort] are facing significant difficulties with their character and moral compromises, even within the church."⁵

Basically, this means we're abusing alcohol just as much as our non-Christian counterparts. We're cohabitating and engaging in premarital sex just as much. And we're gossiping, being gluttonous, stealing music, cheating and lying just as much.

Though living by our own rules — or no rules at all — leaves us spiritually disoriented, we find it better than the alternative: being lumped in with all those legalistic hypocrites. We don't want to be like those people.

So we go about our lives as moral vagrants with nowhere to settle, doing whatever seems OK at the moment. We say we love God — and by and large we do, I think. But our day-in-day-out lives communicate a weak, ineffective gospel — one that doesn't lead to true life change. That's not the gospel of Christ.

Don't Tell Them What to Do?

If we're not big fans of submitting ourselves to biblical standards, then we like even less the thought of imposing those standards on other people — the cardinal sin of legalists.

Indeed, it is unloving and dehumanizing to make people believe the love their Creator has for them is in any way contingent on their actions. Because everyone will screw up; we will be human.

One of the primary questions of our generation, then, is how do we love people while upholding biblical standards? Sadly, many of us believe that to be an impossible task. So, in attempts to maintain a posture of love and acceptance, we opt to shed our values. Again, here's Kinnaman:

In our studies we discovered young Christians currently embrace the acceptability of many behaviors older believers staunchly reject. For example, a majority of born-again adults in their twenties and thirties currently believe that gambling, cohabitation, and sexual fantasies are morally acceptable. There are also huge gaps between young believers and older Christians when it comes to the acceptability of sex outside of marriage, profanity, drunkenness, pornography, homosexual sex, and illegal drug use.⁶

To be honest, I understand the temptation to water things down. I cringe whenever I hear someone in the media representing my faith in a manner that's less than winsome. I dislike sticking out like a sore thumb for what I believe as much as the next person. But if we're going to associate ourselves with Christ, well, we'd better get used to that sort of thing.

If we continue down the path we're on, we'll just be creating as many problems as we think we're solving. Admittedly, people probably won't be turned off from Christianity like they are now. But neither will they be drawn to Christ by what they see in us. We'll fail to be lights in a dark world.⁷

Where Do We Go from Here?

So, if we're ever going to figure all this out — if we're going to live truly Christ-honoring lives — we have to manage to keep the baby while disposing of the bathwater, which is to say we have to find balance.

First, we have to admit legalism has part of the answer. We do need to pursue holiness, as the legalists would tell us. After all, in 1 Peter 1:16 we read, "But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: 'Be holy, because I am holy'" (NIV).

And this laissez faire attitude that seems to be prevailing among us younger Christians has another part of the answer: We need to continue working at loving others who find themselves caught in sin. Jesus' interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well exemplifies this truth quite clearly.

C O F F E E  S H O P

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How can we avoid both legalism and self-indulgence?

Join the discussion!

In short, we have to combine the two. We must pursue a personal righteousness that shows people that we ain't messin' around. But we must couple it with a radical transparency that invites people into grace and love and conversation about the power of Christ's gospel.

That's what our world needs to see.

Let's talk more about what that might look like. Until next time.