gettin down to the nitty gritty

I remember a time in a church around election time when I noticed a “Christian voters guide” in the bulletin we were handed. I remember think wow is this inappropriate. I related my feelings to many people and was surprised at the reaction I received. Most of the people believed that this type of handout is necessary to make sure that biblical principles would be used in selecting the elected officials and propositions on the ballot. I wanted to say “who’s biblical principles” , but I didn’t.

I would like to say that things like the situation above surprise me, but they do not. I have a long history of this happening to me. While in high school I remember, being told that I needed to get a “good Christian haircut” by some of my church friends. I remember a time when I was going to a very large church that many of your would recognize the name of, when I heard a sermon on “Grey Areas for Men”. The pastor told us all about the gray areas like men with longer than collar length hair, men with facial hair, and men that had pierced ears. I turned to my wife and said “geese I’m a walking gray area.”

I am not putting this under the categories of pet peeves but maybe I should.  My question to those who believe some of this stuff is “what gives you the right to judge what is Christian or not and why must you try to biblicize your personal beliefs or cultural preferences.”

I remember the first time that one of my oldest son’s friends got a tattoo.  I was sitting there watching this high school band do the worship and doing a great job when I was tapped on the shoulder and asked” do you know the scripture that says we should not tattoo ourselves?” This was before I learned to hold my tongue better and I turned to the man and asked him when the last time he ate shrimp was, or did he have a shirt with mixed fibers.I knew he was talking about Leviticus 19:28.

Why is it that some people can take some laws of the scriptures, like eating meat with blood in it, or not  shaving the sides of their heads( like in most modern haircuts) or eating fruit from a tree that is less than 5 years old and remove them from the list that is no longer accurate ,but when it comes to something that they don’t like for personal or cultural reason they want to enforce that law.

I think what it all comes down to is this; all of us want others to believe what we do. I know that most of us in the emerging church would say that is not so, but if we are honest we would say that it would make life and ministry a whole lot easier.

I have always been the swim against the steam kind of guy. I have good company though so it does not bother me so much. If you think about it the United States was founded and established by the same type of people.

I always try to use Jesus as my example. I know that I am not always successful, but I do try. Let’s face it, Jesus was a radical. He messed up some stuff; he turned the religious leaders on edge. He was the radical of radicals.

The one thing that Jesus did not do was fight just to fight. When he did go against the flow it was to point to the real thing, a relationship with the Father; the destiny of every human being. He also tried to show people that faith was not about what others told you to do, but what God tells us to do.


I think it is time for all of us, myself included, to look at our personal opinions and cultural biases and do our best to put them aside. After all, we need to be sharing Jesus Christ and what he has done, not our opinions of dress codes and bodily adornment.