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But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
Matthew 22:34-40 (NASB).
Note that Jesus did not say, “These two commandments replace the whole Law and the Prophets.” He said the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commandments. The two commandments are the framework on which the Law and the Prophets hang.
What do these commandments mean in real life? What do they, or should they, mean to a traditional Christian or a promoter of Christianity Lite?
Let’s take a practice the Bible clearly condemns in both the OT and NT. Just so we don’t stray into the dangerous waters of political incorrectness, we’ll call this practice “waffling.” Thou shalt not waffle ... waffling is an abomination unto the Lord ... wafflers will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.
We’ll even say waffling is what is euphemistically called a “victimless” practice. Many people waffle alone, while others waffle with other wafflers, but no one has waffling forced upon him or her.
Waffling has become widely accepted in modern society, even by people who don’t waffle. Non-wafflers see no real harm. In the absence of the biblical prohibition, perhaps no one would have a serious concern about waffling.
Let’s say we're traditional Christians and wish to abide by the two great commandments. How would we fulfill the first commandment to love God with all our heart, soul and mind insofar as waffling is concerned?
We would do this by honoring God’s command not to waffle. We would accept the wisdom of God’s command even if the purpose wasn’t entirely clear to us. We would trust that the command was in our best interests because it was issued by our kind and loving Heavenly Father. We would neither waffle nor encourage others to waffle. Simple enough.
What about the second commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves? Would it be loving toward my neighbor – for that matter, toward God – if I as a Christian turned a blind eye to my neighbor’s waffling, if I tolerated it and encouraged others to tolerate it? No, that would dishonor God and leave my neighbor clueless that waffling is condemned by the God I believe will one day sit in judgment of him. Would it be loving toward my neighbor or God if I harassed my neighbor at every opportunity, screaming that he was a godless waffler doomed to Hell? No, that would not be loving toward my neighbor or God either.
It would be loving toward my neighbor and God if I, in fulfillment of the Great Commission, explained to my neighbor that, first and foremost, he is a creature of God who, even as a waffler, is loved by God as fully as anyone else on earth. If he chooses to acknowledge his fallen state and accept God’s offer of forgiveness, he is going to have to recognize that waffling is condemned by God and is inconsistent with the Christian walk. He is going to have to deal with his waffling with the help of the Holy Spirit and the Christian community, and this may prove to be a challenging task. He cannot just carve out waffling as his personal exception to God’s commands. “God loves me as I am, waffling and all. No need to change.” That attitude would indicate his repentance was not sincere and would not be loving God with all his heart, soul and mind.
The waffling analogy fits an entire spectrum of practices the Bible clearly condemns. The traditional Christian community, alas, has winked at and even embraced some of these practices as fully as the secular community. The dynamic young whiz kid who wants to be our new pastor has had three no-fault divorces and is now cohabitating with his fiancé to make sure he doesn’t make a fourth mistake? Well, hey, these things happen; there but for the grace of God go I; judge not lest ye be judged; let he who is without sin, yada yada. With other practices – and we all know what they are – the Christian community takes a hard line. There is hypocrisy anyone can see.
Within the community I’ve been calling Christianity Lite, the dynamics are different. Notwithstanding the clear biblical prohibition, the promoters of Christianity Lite have simply decided God doesn’t care about waffling or much of anything else. Caring about waffling would be “unworthy” of any being they would be willing to worship as God. Ergo, the clear biblical prohibition against waffling may simply be disregarded. Indeed, all biblical prohibitions may be disregard insofar as they concern practices the promoters of Christianity Lite deem pleasurable, harmless or amusing.
The great commandment to love God with all one's heart, soul and mind? Since Christianity Lite has eradicated the biblical prohibition against waffling, the Christianity Lite community may proceed to fulfill the great commandment (in their own minds anyway) without any concern whatsoever about waffling or any other biblical prohibition they deem unworthy of God. One can waffle all day every day and still claim to be fulfilling the great commandment because, hey, God loves what we love!
But even the promoters of Christianity Lite do want to fulfill that "love your neighbor" thing. In fact, they believe that loving their neighbor is the very definition of loving God with all their heart, soul and mind. There is, in reality, only one commandment – love your neighbor as yourself.
I describe above how a traditional Christian would love his neighbor as himself – by explaining that the neighbor is a creature of God who, even as a waffler, is loved by God as fully as anyone else on earth; that if he chooses to acknowledge his fallen state and accept God’s offer of forgiveness, he is going to have to accept that waffling is contrary to God’s command and is inconsistent with the Christian walk; and that he is going to have to deal with his waffling with the help of the Holy Spirit and the Christian community, perhaps at considerable cost to himself. Because the promoters of Christianity Lite have eradicated the biblical prohibition against waffling, none of this makes any sense.
The only alternative the promoters of Christianity Lite are left with is to tolerate and even celebrate their neighbor’s waffling. And this is what they do. “Loving my neighbor as myself” becomes “treating my neighbor exactly as I would like to be treated if I were an incorrigible waffler.”
And how would I like to be treated? To be left alone to waffle in peace – yes, that would be OK. To have my waffling openly tolerated and even defended against those who would question it – yes, that would be even better. To have my waffling actually celebrated – perfect!
To summarize, the traditional Christian community is guilty of hypocrisy insofar as the various species of waffling are concerned. Not only that, but certain segments of the traditional Christian community take such a harsh stance against selected species of waffling – their pet peeves - that they come across as distinctly unloving as well as hypocritical. Perhaps largely in reaction to these failings, the Christianity Lite community blends two distinct commandments into one and then “fulfills” it by tolerating and celebrating practices the Bible clearly and unequivocally condemns.
The solution, in my opinion, is for the traditional Christian community to clean up its act, deal more consistently with all practices the Bible condemns, and expose Christianity Lite as the fraud it is - not to cave in to the Christianity Lite delusion of equating "loving my neighbor as myself" with "tolerating and celebrating whatever my neighbor does."
When Jesus said the ^ above ^ he was still under the old Constitution of the Mosaic law.
Jesus gave us a NEW commandment to have self-sacrificing love for others as he did according to John 13:34-35.
So, in other words, we are to now to love neighbor 'more' than self.
When Jesus said the ^ above ^ he was still under the old Constitution of the Mosaic law.
Jesus gave us a NEW commandment to have self-sacrificing love for others as he did according to John 13:34-35.
So, in other words, we are to now to love neighbor 'more' than self.
It's quite interesting to me that "waffling" is always defined quite narrowly by biblical obstructionists to mean sins they themselves do not ever commit.
How frequently do we hear sermons about gluttony in a nation in which at least a third of us ARE gluttons?
How frequently do we hear sermons about divorce now that roughly half our church population IS divorced and remarried?
We've got plenty of love not to waive those flags in front of people while insisting on our "christian" right not to serve gay people cakes.
Methinks the double standard is far more disgusting to God than waving red flags to others about their sins. We love to see the splinter and we believe we can look around the plank in our own eye to see it clearly!
As an afterthought, don't you already have a thread on this self same subject? Didn't generate enough interest or what?
Last edited by Wardendresden; 06-14-2017 at 05:16 PM..
You know, I think your "waffling" is a LOT like the Jewish reaction to the injunction not to "seethe a kid in it's mother's milk." They focus on the details of the physical act and make a whole lot of guidelines to prevent the possibility of that physical act occurring, but they ignore the reason behind the injunction, which Maimonides indicated was participation in pagan religious practices or "black magic." When every indication that "waffling" is wrong is about participation in such practices, did you ever think that the reason is that participation rather than the physical act? No, you just continue 3,000 years of error because you don't want to examine the prejudice that has been built on that error.
In the same way you focus on the RULES of the Law rather than the fact that they are intended as rules to promote community rather than look at the principle of concern for the well-being of others that should animate those imperfect rules and which should be the basis for examining the effectiveness of any rule.
Your theology is completely awry, and only serves to make the self-righteous feel justified.
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