When Right Isn't Enough

Growing up in a rural part of the state of Georgia that eventually was swallowed up by the ever-expanding city of Atlanta, I was conditioned to accept change as a part of life. One thing that did not seem to change though, at least not while I was growing up in the 90s and early 00s, was a general respect that people had for Christianity and the Bible. My hometown might have been quickly suburbanizing, but it was still in the so-called “Bible belt.” My teachers taught me amoeba-to-man evolution, but more than one of them said, “I don’t really agree with this, but I have to teach it.” My school friends weren’t members of the Lord’s church, but most were churchgoers. They believed the Bible is God’s word; they believed sex should wait for marriage, didn’t curse, and didn’t do drugs. My peers in the church were the same. In this environment, even if people didn’t fully know, do, or in other ways pursue what was right, they generally had an idea of what it was.

Ideas though don’t always or even often correlate to actions. As I grew older, I discovered that many people I knew simply abandoned that sense of right that we all knew. I don’t know what happened to many of my childhood friends outside of the church as we lost touch after high school, but I remember having a conversation with one while he was in college and I was in preaching school who described trying alcohol (something we both had been committed to avoiding when we were in high school). I learned the sad story of another friend who hated how his parents behaved while they were drunk and who told me he would never drink; he died due to an alcohol overdose. As I think about my friends in the church, it isn’t much better; far too many of them fell away from the faith, falling captive to the very things we were told in Bible classes and sermons to avoid.

What is right is established by God’s Word. God’s Word is powerful, living, and active (Hebrews 4:12); it contains the truth which can set us free from all kinds of things that enslave us (John 8:31-32). I never want to discount that power. At the same time, respecting what was right, and, especially in the case of my church peers, knowing what was right proved not to be enough for many.

I can remember going through some study books in high school classes with titles like “Biblical Truths for Today’s Teens.” Besides typically being written a couple of decades before “Today,” they honestly felt like big lists of “don’ts.” And it seemed so simple: if you just didn’t think, do, or say those clearly sinful things, things would be good and God would be happy! Again though, while the truths behind these “don’t’s” were powerful and real, they clearly were not enough.

My hometown has continued to change dramatically since I lived there. I drove through several years ago as an adult, and it was already at that time almost unrecognizable. I doubt anyone going to school, even right there in the Bible belt, would find the kinds of teachers and friends that I found. In many places outside of the Bible belt, that since of “right” has been gone for a long time (if it was ever there). More than one young adult has shared with me their reality, one of growing up surrounded by atheists and agnostics rather than churchgoers and believers. If “right” wasn’t enough in my childhood, it certainly isn’t enough now.
 
It wasn’t until several years after I finished high school that I heard a preacher talking about something that (to me at least) was revolutionary. Instead of just saying, “Don’t have sex before marriage,” he encouraged us to give some thought as to how that might be done. He described secular dating as practice for divorce and a well-traveled pathway to sexual sin. He said that “Make no provision for the flesh,” an instruction given by Paul in Romans 13:14, meant that Christians should date differently. Young men and women should vet out their prospective partners and determine their character before dating; they should establish habits that (surprise, surprise) made no provision for the flesh. It wasn’t rocket science, but no one had ever told me when I was a teen the simple things he suggested like, “Meet up in public,” or, “Don’t go over to each other’s houses if you're going to be the only ones there,” or, “Don’t sit in a parked car alone.”

There are some people who might interpret these suggestions as legalistic. They certainly could be; any time we impose a restriction that God does not impose and bind it as though it were God’s law, we are being legalistic. At the same time, we should understand that Scripture upholds taking an instruction like Romans 13:14 and doing exactly what that preacher did with it by discussing how it could be carried out practically. This is what the wisdom, prudence, and discretion that the Proverbs encourage are all about. Is the father of Proverbs 7 being legalistic when he talks about the naïve young man who passed near the house of the immoral woman and encourages his son not to go anywhere near her? No, I would suggest that he is being wise. Spiritual maturity demands that we move beyond simple right and wrong in order that we might seek what is best, “that you may approve the things that are excellent” as Paul prayed (Philippians 1:10)

Truly, “right” alone has never been enough. Adam and Eve knew exactly what was right, but it did not prevent them from ignoring it (through ignorance or intention) and doing what was wrong. “Right” is upheld and given strength by a steadfast commitment to practicality and intentionality.  Paul’s command, “do not be conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2), is not about keeping in mind a list of things that must not be done and simply not doing them. It is about thinking about the unique pressures of different places and different stages of life and adopting intentionally countercultural, otherworldly habits so as to not be shaped by them.

Christians, “we are not ignorant” of our enemy’s “devices”; there is no reason that “Satan should take advantage of us” (2 Corinthians 2:11). Let’s give God’s word real power in our lives by pursuing it in a way that’s practical and real. If we do, we’ll be equipped for whatever challenges our changing world might bring.

-Patrick Swayne  
patrick@tftw.org