Legalism: harness the savage beast and go skinny dipping

I grew up with a legalist. That kind of implies that I was not buried in the confines of Christian legalism but you know, I was in it deep too. We were both in it deep so that escaping from it was just pure bliss. Older friends of ours who we looked up to in our young Christian faith started swearing, a Christian no-no, as a joke. Our rationale became; they swear so it’s ok just as long as non-Christians don’t hear us. So my legalistic friend and I would walk home from school cussing each other out with strings of swear words that didn’t make any sense together just to have a good laugh. My legalistic friend would laugh so hard at me that he wouldn’t even be able to stand up. I would try and keep a straight face while spitting out the nonsense swear words and he would pretty much fall over and pee his pants. I always admired him for that. I admired that he laughed harder than me. I got to the point where I may have been fake laughing a bit just to keep the game going because, hey, it feels good to make someone laugh so hard that they just pee everywhere. I’m pretty sure nothing else is better for one’s confidence levels.

My friend and I grew up some. We stopped swearing (I think it was because we got really convicted of it and not because it got old) and we started to drive cars around the age of 16. My friend had a beautiful heart and he still does. One of the reasons it was so beautiful then because of his stupid legalism and how it reared its ugly head when he drove. I say it was beautiful not because I appreciated it then, cause I hated it then. If the speed limit was 20 mph, he went just a hair under, so not to break the law. I mean he was 16 years old. He was supposed to be getting speeding tickets until they revoked his license. Now, I appreciate my friend and his legalism because he was doing what he thought was right no matter what. He was intensely doing something he believed in no matter what people thought about him and I think there is a beauty in that.

My favorite example of this was when four of us guys went out to the lake one night. It must have been about two o’clock AM and we are all jumping off the dock, naked, into duck poop pond, except my buddy. I remember being up on that dock, looking over at him and seeing his tears. Crying usually stops such fun being that crying means that someone probably stepped on a broken beer bottle or something else tragic had happened. My legalistic friend explained to us, the best he could through his sobs, that he was pretty much hating himself at that moment because we were all having such a good time and he was afraid he legalism was going to ruin it for us. See, the park we were in was closed after sunset, so we really weren’t allowed to be there and legalism was just destroying my buddy because he was there and yup, it was after sunset. We didn’t have to leave then but we did because it was obviously killing my buddy inside and since we wanted to be with my buddy we all left.

I don’t think I will ever forget that. It seems a pretty silly thing to remember; a guy crying, naked, on a dock, in the middle of the night looks pretty funny in hindsight. He tried to go against his legalistic nature and it just destroyed him. The guy couldn’t have fun the rest of the night.

That guy and I are still great friends but he isn’t legalist anymore and I am grateful for his sake. He is getting to taste freedom and grace and it is beautiful. He is an even more amazing guy because of it. Simply everybody wants to be friends with this guy. But something in me misses his legalism. I am the most tolerant I have ever been in my life right now. I am working for freedom from things that confine me and confine the work that I believe Christ is trying to do in me, and somehow I look back at my legalistic friend and I see a savage desire to do what is right that is attractive to me. I have lost that desire in my pursuit of grace. Sure, I want to do good still and to be good, I want it really quite badly, but “I want to really bad” just isn’t driving me like legalism drove my friend. My own past legalism and even the present legalism isn’t impressive to me and I am sure that my friends past legalism isn’t attractive to himself but I am just attracted to the degree of his desire. If I could just have that desire but somehow not be legalistic then I wouldn’t have to be sickened by my own selfishness so often.

The interesting thing is that my not-legalistic-anymore friend does even better at “doing good” now that he is not legalistic. In his freedom, he is awesome at loving people and it is because of a new “savage desire.” From somewhere, he got this crazy desire to love. It comes to him naturally. This new desire that my friend has harnessed quite unwittingly daunts me. It challenges me to love people like he does but I am afraid to try, I am afraid to fail, I am afraid of what people might think. I am stuck not wanting to challenge myself, always defending myself with the argument that if I challenge myself I’ll just fall back into that legalism.

The next season of my life will tell me a lot more about how I can reconcile all of this. This is just one of the reasons, reasons that keep popping up, for me to go and figure this stuff out. I am planning a move to Kansas City and when people ask why I give different answers depending on who is asking. Sometimes I say travel, sometimes I say to visit friends, to try something new. I think people label it as “He’s going to go and find himself.” Maybe that is true but more than anything I think I just want to go and learn and be a freak’n huge sponge to what’s out there. Hopefully, I learn a habit that I’ll never stop. Hopefully I learn to love people better. Hopefully I am on the right track.