Study 49 – Grace and the Prevailing Culture
‘Worldly’ was a new word to me when I was first converted. Evidently I had to learn what was and wasn’t worldly and as time passed I realised that the distinction wasn’t always obvious. Definitions vary from nation to nation and from tradition to tradition and they also get adjusted as fashions change. It seems that ‘worldliness’ is more accurately understood in terms of the specific ‘no go’ areas as defined by your particular church culture.
Clothing
Appropriate Sunday clothing certainly seemed significant in my early years as a Christian. You frowned on men who didn’t wear ties, on women who didn’t wear dresses or skirts and (ghastly thought) on anyone who dared to wear jeans!
On one occasion I was invited to speak at a conference in Bloemfontein, South Africa. I was wearing ‘smart casual’ clothes throughout the week and the pastor who’d invited me was similarly dressed. My congregation were in shorts or casual trousers and short-sleeved shirts. At breakfast time the following Sunday my host was wearing a vest and shorts and when it was time to go to the meeting he got the car out and sat in it waiting for me. I was dressed ‘smart casual’ again as I ran to join him, but the look of alarm on his face was unmistakable. He was sitting in the colossal heat in a three-piece suit and tie. I paused to ask if I was appropriately attired and he replied somewhat sternly, ‘I have never addressed my people without wearing a tie’. I rushed back indoors and added the required jacket and tie.
But in one Eastern European setting, I discovered that wearing a tie in church was considered worldly because it drew attention to you and displayed an arrogant attitude. So all the men in the congregation wore dark suits but not ties.
Objects
I discovered that inappropriate clothing wasn’t the only sign of worldliness. There were ‘unholy’ objects too. I still remember the first time I saw a young man bringing a guitar to church. As he approached the steps to the main entrance, the wife of the church’s leading deacon stood on the top step and thundered, ‘You’re not bringing that in here!’ He withdrew in shame.
In those days we Baptists regarded Anglicans as over-formal when they bowed to the altar! But for us, guitars were worldly and the church building was God’s house where only whispering and tiptoeing were seemly. One received one’s hymnbook at the door, expressed appreciation with a hushed ‘thank you’, proceeded to one’s seat, bowed in prayer for an appropriate length of time and waited silently for the service to begin and run its course. A nod or half smile to a friend was allowed, but speech was outlawed and woe betide the deacon whose shoe squeaked while he was ‘distributing the elements’ at communion!
One day I stopped on my way to church to buy some petrol for my motorbike. A passing church member asked what I was doing. ‘Getting petrol,’ was my naïve reply, to which she sniffed, ‘Don’t you know it’s the Sabbath?’ I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about, but soon learned that there was a rather arbitrary list of things forbidden for Christians on Sundays.
I’ve read that, having invited Billy Graham to conduct his first great crusade in the UK in the 1950s, some leading British Christians received some alarming news. His wife, Ruth, had a modern haircut and actually wore make-up, even lipstick! Panic ensued during her sea journey to the UK. Surely British Christians would be scandalised by such worldliness.
Denominations have split and new groups have formed over the issue of whether ladies may or may not wear earrings. When I was first saved, going to the cinema was definitely worldly. Classical music was OK but jazz definitely wasn’t.
Names
In some churches I’ve been expected to call men and women ‘Brother John’ or ‘Sister Anna’. On one occasion I was talking to an Indian Christian woman in Mumbai. During our conversation she simply called me ‘Terry’ and then paused with embarrassment and corrected herself, ‘Sorry, Brother Terry’.
When I was preaching in Mobile, Alabama, I publicly asked to be forgiven if I omitted to precede people’s names by the required ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ since I’d never learned to do it and would probably forget. I’d grown up with a brother and a sister but it had never occurred to me to refer to them by anything than their actual name.
So what does grace have to say to this religious minefield? Who makes up the rules? Do they matter? How many do you have to learn? Or can you forget them all and say, ‘A plague on all legalists!’?
To Meditate On
Jesus had a unique attitude towards the Sabbath.
‘Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?’ (Luke 13:16).
‘If one of you has a son or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?’ (Luke 14:5).
‘Now if a child can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing the whole man on the Sabbath?’ (John 7:23).
Food For Thought
Read Exodus 20:8-11.
In the Old Testament what do you think was God’s goal in commanding his people to observe the Sabbath?
Read Matthew 12:1-12.
In the New Testament what was Jesus’ emphasis?
To Ponder
How would you define worldliness?
To Consider
Read Colossians 2:16,17.
What is your understanding of this passage?
To Be Inspired
‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath’ (Mark 2:27,28).
Jesus |
