Self-Control

I have some questions as I look around at the way things are. I’m trying to compare what I’m seeing to Jesus’ life and teachings and see how things line up…

Maybe I’m just getting to be an old man. Maybe I’m slowly fading out of the mainstream. Maybe I’m a product of some old school moral/ethical grid that has narrowed my view…I’m open to any of those possibilities.

Here’s what I’m wondering about…

- Is any kind of behavior okay as long as it’s in the name of “fun”?
- If we are indulging in “entertainment” are we okay to loosen our need to discern right vs. wrong and participation vs. abstaining?
- Should the way we, as Christians, pursue fun or indulgence or entertainment have any marked difference from those who aren’t followers of Jesus?
- How do we choose between grace-driven liberty and responsibility when we are serious about redeeming our world?

Maybe I’m wrong, but at times it seems like we’re getting a little sloppy. Here are some real examples:

- We have become daily consumers of Jackass-ian entertainment such as YouTube, break.com and other forms of hilarious, jaw-dropping, envelope-pushing media. Christians seem to be shameless connoisseurs of video outtakes and bits that we’d have blushed over, shied away from, or gagged at in the past.
- We are regular voyeurs of intimacy, violence and wise-ass humor through movies and music. Christians are renting the same movies and downloading the same tunes as those who have no claim on pursuit of spiritual health.
- Speaking of “wise-ass,” the vocabulary of the twenty-something Christian continues to get a little spicier, and little earthier. It’s like we’re trying out the words that we haven’t felt right about saying in the past, indulging in a little verbal decadence that gives us some sense of release or freedom. What’s more satisfying than cussing up a blue-streak? Maybe an off-color joke, off-the-record?
- I’m hearing all too often of Christian young adults who are passing from moderate enjoyers of a little alcohol to regular abusers.
- Christian “friends-with-benefits”…need I say more? All the fun with none of the commitment…

Am I being unfair? Is this stuff we deal with or deal in? So, in the world of God’s grace, is all that stuff okay? I mean, we are free aren’t we? We have liberty to enjoy life, to have fun, to not taking everything too seriously, right? We can let our guard down and just be, can’t we? Yeah…but something’s not feeling right.

Looking at this dilemma makes me think of a certain cut from the Bible, 1 Corinthians 10:23-24. Paul says it so well in The Message: “Looking at it one way, you could say, ‘Anything goes. Because of God’s immense generosity and grace, we don’t have to dissect and scrutinize every action to see if it will pass muster.’ But the point is not to just get by. We want to live well, but our foremost efforts should be to help others live well.”

Dang. Once again, it’s not about me. Really, technically, we can do anything we want without fear of Hell or punishment. Some of us seem out to prove that! But by thinking that way, we’re WAY missing the point. I have a sense that God is not as concerned with releasing us to find the outer limits of our own liberty as He is to release us from our own junk so we are free to reflect a purified image of humanity to others who are bound up in a miserable existence. Whether it’s by political and economic oppression or by emotional and spiritual brokenness, people all around us are not free. God has freed us so we, by example, can help release in others the freedom to both totally know His love and to do the right thing as much as possible. This is the greater purpose that we may be missing when we are just viewing liberty as a personal thing that God has given us to do our own thing and have a good time.

I want to challenge anyone patient enough to read this far to begin to see themselves as God’s. To embrace the truth of the statement “We are His workmanship, created for good works in Christ.” I’d like to lay out the idea that we’re allowed and encouraged to have a ton of fun, but that we should always dial in Paul’s opinion that “our foremost efforts should be to help others live well.” Sometimes that calls for restraint. When we’re restrained for the benefit of someone else, we’ve found real liberty.

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This entry was posted on June 12th, 2007 and is filed under Doug Cooper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.