Rules, Rules, Rules...

If I were not a Christian, but instead was looking from the outside in, at first glance I don't believe that I'd like what I'd see.

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"You don't keep getting x-rays to treat your broken bone."

In a good amount of the conversations I have about God with non-believers, or those who believe God exists but have a lax view of Him, part of the conversation has to do with all the rules and strict living that being a Christian entails. I've heard people say things like, "it's so restricting to follow God, why would I want to live like that?... It's a book full of fairy tails and old rigid rules, why should I even consider it?... God is just an angry deity that wants to kill everyone that doesn't follow His absurd rules... Jesus was just a good teacher who lived a decent life, which we should all try to do, but to dedicate my life to some guy, why?"

So, I get it.. I get why Christianity can be off-putting to nonbelievers. That's why, to start this post, I said if I weren't a Christian and I was looking in from the outside, I probably wouldn't like what I would see on the superficial level. It can be portrayed as a religion with a million things to keep straight and terrible punishment if you don't comply.

Countless people growing up felt like they had to do x, y,& z to earn God's favor... like a check list of sorts. A lot of my friends who are catholic would talk about having to go to CCD, first communion, get confirmed, go to confession, and many other things I've lost track of. I felt overwhelmed just listening to everything they had to do. I know people, catholic or not, that think that volunteering at the church, donating money, doing a good deed, and saying the right amount of prayers, etc. will earn them a spot in heaven; I mean after all, they didn't kill anyone... so why would God turn them down? This type of religion is an empty cycle. After a while, these legalistic rituals get old, you don't always feel better afterwards, and God still doesn't necessarily feel present in your life. The fire fades- the rigidness of the church has hurt your desire to know God.

(I don't mean to bash anyone who is catholic, I am just using some of the aspects of their religious acts as an example because it's more familiar to me than other branches of Christianity.)

So what am I getting at?

Legalism in the church destroys the Gospel.

Side note: I can't take credit for the lesson of this post, nor the brilliant explanation I will write out shortly. In this Sunday's sermon, pastor Cody taught from the book of 1 Timothy. I almost audibly said, "wow!" a few times during the sermon because of how Cody was able to so clearly explain the scriptures to us in ways that I haven't heard before. I couldn't wait to hop on the site and share his words with you.

So, I'll say it again. Legalism in the church of Christ destroys the Gospel of Christ. What the heck does this mean? First, by legalism, I mean the rule & regulation run church that focuses more on rituals and tradition than learning about God. Let me ask you a few questions to get your mind going in the right direction..

Have you ever been told that you can't dress casually when attending church? Have you ever been judged in church due to your tattoos or hairstyle, or even skin color? Have you ever been looked at funny when your acts of worship, like clapping or raising your hands while singing, were not the norm of the church? Have you ever felt like God would look at you in disgust if you did not meet up to your church's superficial expectations? The list could go on.

Fortunately not every church of Christ deals with church goers who are judgemental like the examples above, but too many times there are Christians who forget the importance of the Gospel and cling to tradition and ritual. Unfortunately, these legalistic Christians can push away people who want to learn more about God but are unfamiliar with the cultural norms of the church. Little do these Christians realize, but their walk with God is not on the right road. Rather than focusing on Jesus, their focus is on their control of the church.

... Before I go any further it is important to know what the word Gospel means. The Gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ- that He, the only Son of God, lived a perfect & sinless life, was crucified in our place to take on our punishment for our sins, but victoriously rose Himself from the grave which defeated Satan power over us, giving us new life in Him. All it takes to gain this free gift of life is faith in Him.

Here's the example that my pastor gave that sums up the dangerous legalistic culture that church goers can fall into. At a church Cody formerly pastored it was Vacation Bible School season, which is in the summer so it is warm/hot. He explained that there were several teenage boys who volunteered to work as VBS leaders. These boys wore baseball hats while volunteering at VBS. Cody further told us that there was a woman who attended the church who came up to him and demanded that the boys be told to remove their baseball hats because they are not allowed in the church. Cody told the woman, "No. Let's instead praise these boys for deciding to give up their vacation and opportunity to sleep in all week, and come in and help teach the Word of God to these children instead. It's hot outside, and they are coming in and out of the church constantly as part of their jobs here. Ignore the hats." It's a simple, yet very relatable, example of how easily we can forget what's important. Of course it is the courteous thing to not wear baseball hats indoors in a more formal setting, and of course it is appreciated when people tidy up how they dress when they attend church. BUT! But these things do not gain you brownie points with God, nor do they send you to Hell if you do not do them.

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Once more.. this legalistic way to run a church with all these man made rules and restrictions can and does hinder the preaching of the Gospel. This is how Cody put it... If a church is preaching, learning, and living out the Gospel, they will love one another, support one another, and focus on teaching the Word of God to everyone they can- they will not be focused on people's clothing, cars, or anything of the sort. If the church is more focused on keeping up with man made traditions, restricting people's actions (such as what to wear), or what types of songs the worship team should/shouldn't sing, or how loud or soft they should be, etc., then the focus is not on the Gospel, and those who attend the church are learning more man-made rules than about the love of God. There are appropriate times for regulations- but it should not supersede the teaching of Jesus.

It's simple. God's plan for His church is to love and learn about Christ, and then go and make disciples among nations. It's mankind that add in all these silly and mostly destructive checklists that prevent the people from focusing on what's important- Jesus. Of course it is important to keep the laws the God set before us in the Bible, but when man made regulations take precedence over God's, the Gospel gets muddy and then forgotten.

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Here's another part (the biggest part) of the problem. When the Gospel is not preached, people are not taught and/or forget that following rules does not gain you access to Heaven.

Say you grew up in a church that taught the "try you're best, do all that you can, believe that you will receive blessings & you will, do this, do that..." Joel Osteen type of teaching. You grow up thinking that following tradition and being a good person gets you blessings and eternity in Heaven. Here's where Cody's awesome explanation on how that type of false legalistic teaching can be so destructive comes into play... Let's say you broke your arm. You go and get an x-ray and it shows you the damage. You are diagnosed with a broken arm. Do you keep going to get x-ray, after x-ray, after x-ray to heal it? No, of course not! X-rays are used for diagnostic reasons. They don't heal, they point out what needs to be fixed, and it is only then that you can focus on healing the proper way. Think of the Bible as a whole & the laws within it as our spiritual x-ray. We go to the Bible to learn how God wants us to live, and it exposes our brokenness and sin. It's the x-ray into our souls and it points us to Christ. Here's the key point that you need to remember after finishing this post. The x-rays do not heal our broken arm. Following God's laws do not save us from our sin. Both are diagnostic and helpful. We see our brokenness in both, we see our faults in both, and we see what we need to fix in both. How do we heal? Believing the Gospel to be true is how. Then following God's laws is not in vain. If we follow God's laws but do not believe the Gospel to be true, we are simply living a good life with nothing to show for it when we stand in front of God when we die. If we follow God's laws AND believe that Jesus died for us and rose from the dead, taking our place, then we are forgiven in the eyes of our Lord.- we are healed.

So, what should we do? How do we know what's man made ritual and the law of God? Again, it's simple... look to the Bible. The Bible is the Word of God the Father. The Holy Spirit guided the men who wrote the books of the Bible, to communicate God's words to us. We should put away the Bibles that have anything additional added to it (besides the obvious helpful tools such as maps and measurement tables, and so on). Turning to the Bible will expose our brokenness as the x-ray does. But we cannot be mistaken and believe that simply following the rules within it or the man made rituals will pave our way to Heaven. It is only faith in Christ that will. Christ is our healer, our redeemer, and aim.

Do not let the legalistic church scare you away or fool you. Christ is the one & only way to receive God's mercy.. not whether you wear hats in church or not.

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I encourage you to listen to Cody's sermon. He's way more funny and well versed on this than I am! It will be posted (now or later) on the church's website which is linked at the bottom of this website. The date of the sermon was May 5th, 2019 if you want to look it up in the recorded sermon's list provided for you. Please give it a listen, it will make a lot more sense than this! haha ;)