Cards, dancing, and alcohol evil? Ummm...no -- unless they are your uncontrollable weakness. Instead...
Life---and life more abundantly! Cool! (Pass a good beer as evidence of God's provision and love -- and I'll make sure to not become a drunk!)
Since Jesus isn't here and we instead have something better, the Holy Spirit (His words, not mine), we have to rely on the completed Word (which Jesus is called in John 1:1) and know that "the Ghost" is leading within the boundaries of Christ/the Word. The church is just that: People following God through His ONLY Son, Jesus.
Those who wrote to build the church and go on those missionary journeys and, save John, all DIE for what they knew to be truth. And Paul? He heard the WHOLE PLAN. But today, we blow him off in favor of things more palatable. We don't like the little ugly, zealous Jew with a thorn in his flesh.
Truth is God LOVES using the impossibly broken and unusable to fulfill His Purposes. Not "as they were", but renewed and redeemed to something entirely new. That is truth.
Today...Truth is out of vogue.
What's consistent is that cultural difference exists where the behavior wasn't called "evil". Women leading in church? Not evil. Paul didn't permit it, but nowhere in scripture is it called evil.
Husbands not treating their wives as Christ did the church -- to love to the point of death, putting her salvation before saving his own butt? Not evil, but all us dudes are out of bounds with this one. It is our unmitigated goal.
But there is evil.
Without going into details, I am one of those that should have been stoned for sexual sin. Period. Dot. End of sentence. I have been an unrepentant sinner.
But no more.
And since I'm not a Jew (the olive skin ended with my Dad through his Mom) and ceremonial law doesn't apply to me, I instead look to what the moral law says, what the New Testament says, and -- ultimately -- what is written of God's character. Thankfully, Levitical and Ceremonial Law don't apply to those of us in Christ.
Without scripture -- there is no "God's character". Just...knowing Him by His Invisible Qualities.Thankfully, we have the Bible. We can know as much of Him as He's chosen to reveal to us. Even the Old Testament reveals something to us about our Father.
Others use the Old Testament Law as a big excuse. "Well...the Bible says eating shellfish and the flesh of a swine is terrible, but you do that, right? So you can ignore all that's there." That is like my kid saying because I yelled at his Mom in my anger, he can go rob a bank. Brilliant.
What we're facing is the erosion of truth for the sake of Man. Not God -- Man and his desires.
Here's what Paul says about the final days in his letter to his friend/mentor, Timothy:
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
6 They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, 7 always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.
Wow.
Another "in vogue" thing to do is dismiss Paul. But please remember that if you are part of a church, you are there because Paul, Peter, James, John, Barnabas (sorry...that's who I think wrote Hebrews) dared to believe these things. And the 7 stages of the church (see Revelations 4) have several consistent threads.
At least...consistent until the last, very flawed, church listed.
And I think we're almost there -- and not because of the long list of "terrible things", but because of that ending: We've become vast learners -- but not of truth.
We put more stock into the latest theology, blogger, and opinion. We put more stock into things we "believe". We value human relationships more than Scripture.
Instead of following in the footsteps of past generations who got it right, we condemn them for the things they did wrong and ignore their difficulty that makes living in most 3rd-world/emerging economy nations look like a cakewalk. But from the comfort of our 21st century pedestal...stone! Stone! STONE! We cast them with impunity.
We learn a lot in our Information Age ...and lost the ability to come to grips with Truth.
Sheep and Children. We're called both repeatedly in Biblical text.
Sheep are just stupid. Without their shepherd, they're just lost.
Children have great trust. Complete trust. Complete love.
What's in style today? "Question Authority"..."Question Truth"..."Question...everything..."
Questioning is good. THAT is VERY Jewish. But it's always questioning God within the boundaries of respect..."Fear" in the OT...and in alignment with the Word. That's what's so amazing about children. Children understand that the questions really aren't about impressing with depth, but about learning the Truth. They are about Him...the Word.
The Word was With God. The Word Was God. He was with God in the beginning.
If we believe that scripture is still open to being re-written by "Jesus", then there really isn't any foundation of truth. Might as well do what I want and ignore this whole God thing. I'll love God and love man in whatever way I see fit as I think "the spirit" (not God) leads.
"...terrible times in the last days." "...always learning but never coming to a full knowledge of truth."
Instead, Paul said repeatedly that we are to test the Spirit.
Test against what?
Acts 17:10-11 is the answer: Test it against the scriptures. God's Word.
The most powerful, Spirit-filled people I know are those who are FREED from fundamentalist, un-scriptural traditions ("The Don't Do List", the "Use Christian-eeze List"), AND are FILLED with the Spirit to do His bidding to bring Good News and Joy and Peace and Justice (even social justice!), and are LEARNING and GROWING and challenged by Truth. So...unbelievably...amazing.
What have I learned? Two big truths.
The first one is this: Many of us (self-included) bombed big time by being more committed to political and social control than helping people know the Messiah who came for them, died for them, and rose again for them -- who sent the Holy Spirit to guide us until the last days, and who will eventually come again.
The second one is this: Many of us have chosen to follow after our own desires (self-included) instead of being rooted in truth, be filled with the Spirit, and to live completely free.
FWIW.
