When you think of Christianity, do you think of freedom or a list of do's and don'ts for your daily life? I would say that more often than not, your answer would be the latter. Why is that? I think one reason is because we constantly hear "Don't drink alcohol. Don't have sex. Don't get a tattoo. Don't. Don't. Don't." Sound familiar? It does to me. This was repeated into my head for years. I'm gonna let you in a little secret, though, I have a tattoo (*gasp*), and I am still going to Heaven.
The Church shouldn't be defined by boundaries, but by freedom. We've heard it. Freedom in Christ. But what does that mean?! I taught a lesson on this a few weekends ago to a youth group. Below is the illustration I used. I heard this about a year ago, and it honestly changed the way I viewed the phrase "freedom in Christ."
What are boundaries designed for? To keep some things in. Keep cattle in the field. Keep children in the yard. However, no matter what you put the fence around, they are always going to go up to the fence see how close they can get to whatever is outside of the boundaries. What do people do when we put "don'ts" on them? They try to see how close they can get without crossing the line. Think about the little brother and sister in the backseat of the family car. Mom tells the son to keep his hands off his sister. What does he do? Puts his finger 1/2 an inch from her face and exclaims, "I'm not touching you! I'm not touching you!" We do this in life too. Tell a person, "Don't have sex before marriage," and they are going to figure out how far they can go while still keeping their virtue.
Look at the top half of the drawing. When boundaries are placed in Christianity, we only focus on that and not on Christ. Our backs are actually AWAY from God. On the flip side, look at the bottom half of the drawing. When no boundaries are placed, our focus is on God. In focusing on Christ, there's really no need to worry about do's and don'ts, because our focus is on the right thing. On the best thing.
Let me know what you think about boundaries and freedom.
