“Don’t Mix the Reds With the Whites!”
By Susan Klein
“One person considers
one day more sacred than another; another
considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own
mind.”
Romans
14:5 (NIV)
My daughter was visiting the other day
and noticed my piles of clothes on the floor waiting to be washed. One tiny
pile of three red items sat to the side…
“You still do your reds separately?” she
inquired.
“Of course! Don’t you?”
If you’ve ever washed a load of clothes, especially
whites, where a stray red t-shirt got mixed in…Pink becomes the new white!
Everyone grows up with a pocket full of
rules. Some rules we carry into our adult life; others we choose to leave on
the path behind. Some become more like guidelines, or suggestions, but aren’t necessarily absolute truths. However,
each is unique to the person who abides by them. Your rules are yours - - mine
are mine. We each choose to follow what works best for us.
That said, there are governing rules
that are absolutes. Each person has laws he must obey, mandated by his or her
government, or else face the imposed consequences. Many would argue that the
Bible has definite rules which we must all obey. So how do we know which ones
are absolutes?
In his book, A Contrarian’s Guide to Knowing God, Larry Osborne
proposes that many of the spiritual disciplines we learn about in Scripture are
“tools” rather than
rules. [1]
They are there as guidelines to help us
follow God better. The messy part comes in when we look at one tool as a rule
for our own personal life, and then we expect others to see it the same way.
For example, one might view tithing as a “rule” they’ve chosen to follow, while others use it
as a guideline or suggestion to determine their giving.
We often want to help others by sharing
our rules with them. If they work for us, why wouldn’t they work for others too, right? Not
necessarily. Since most spiritual disciplines are actually “tools,” we are free
(by the grace that’s been extended to us) to try them out and
see what works best for us. And so is the next person. If I find I need to grow
in a particular area, I may pick up a new “tool” to help me.
If it doesn’t work, I may cast it aside and try something else. What works for me,
may not work for my neighbor.
As for the laundry…perhaps you’re okay with pink?!
GOING DEEPER:
1. Do you tend toward rule-keeping or rule-bending?
2. Are you experiencing the fullness of “grace”?
FURTHER READING:
Susan is married to Mark, and co-leads an in-home
small group. She serves as a mentor to young women, and is a member of Oakwood’s Peace Team, helping people work through conflict.
[1]
Larry Osborne, A Contrarian’s
Guide to Knowing God, chapter 18, Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 2007.
