The fence

My church has a few of these people. I'm sure you know the type, they're everywhere really. The type that insists on telling you what you're doing wrong, but not on serious issues but rather on pointless subjects. These people pop up everywhere, but seem especially prominent in church. I guess the term for them is legalistic. It feels as if these individuals can't wait for a moment to unleash their understanding of scripture in accordance with how others aren't living up to it. This seems to mostly happen from older traditionalist people to younger people, at least in my church. One of the favorite subjects of the people in my church is wearing hats inside the church building. Apparently this is extremely up there on the sin scale (yes, there is a scale. I believe it goes, blasphemy, murder, homosexuality, wearing a hat during service) Now I'm not saying that christians shouldn't hold each other accountable, but I believe you should have a pre-existing relationship with someone if you're going to correct them on something. It also may be a good idea to fully understand what you're correcting someone about before you speak up. Such as the hat thing, I asked someone why it was disrespectful, and the only answer I got was, "it just is" which isn't sufficient enough for me. That's language that, to me, says, "These are the rules. Follow the rules and then you'll be accepted." It's behavior modification. Behavior modification doesn't seem to be the way of Jesus to me. Behavior modification is about changing from the outside in, Jesus is about changing from the inside out. If you hold to these types of rules, that's ok, but you can't force those rules onto others. Now the legalistic people are one end of the spectrum, or at least they think they are. These are people who are judging the legalists. This is often the younger generation towards the older. They take great pleasure in attempting to bring legalists down to size. Are they really on the other side though. Sure in many ways they're different, but in the end, someone's still point fingers and making accusations. I've been on both sides of the fence, and neither one works. Why? There's no love. In 1 corinthians 13 Paul starts to list things that he could do, but are meaningless without love. You can convince someone to adhere to the way you believe, but if there's not love it means nothing. Why? Because if there's no love there's no God. He who does not love does not know God. For God is love - 1 John 4:8

The fence