Pick Your Battles

“Did you see my son walking past your house a few minutes ago?” my friend Martha asked, watching me pull weeds from the garden. Her teenage son was giving her and her husband a run for their money. He was rebelling at just about everything for which his parents stood. The deteriorating relationship was breaking Martha’s heart.

I hadn’t noticed him walking by. “His jeans have rips all the way up his legs,” she explained. “His hair is scraggly and he hasn’t shaved in weeks.” She sighed. “But as I complained to my husband, he asked me one simple question. Is it sin for him to look like that? If not, leave it alone. We have bigger battles to fight.”

Good advice for a parent of a teen. It’s good advice for the Church, as well.

We are a society consumed with appearances. This mind-set bleeds into the church: we can be guilty of concerning ourselves with religious acts far more than actual faith. Jesus confronted this very attitude in the religious leaders of his time. They were angry that his disciples failed to ceremonially clean their hands before eating a meal. This was in violation of what was called the Oral Law, which was a set of traditions the Pharisees themselves had written. In response, Jesus pointed out their own violation of Mosaic Law, commands from God Himself, in honoring one’s father and mother. Bottom line: they might be following some “rules” on a surface level, but their hearts were far from God.

“Religion” gives us a set of external do’s and don’ts. We all have our views of what a “Good Christian” looks like. My parents’ generation had very clear standards. If you were a Good Christian, you did not drink alcohol, did not dance, nor would you dare darken the door of a movie theater. Playing cards were the devil’s tool. Secular music, especially rock and roll, was categorically banished (remember the record burning exhibitions??) Most of these make us shake our heads now. But we are foolish if we don’t acknowledge that the standards of one generation have merely been replaced with different ones today. How spiritual do you feel if you fail to maintain daily devotions? What do you think of kissing before engagement or even marriage? How do view someone with tattoos or body piercing? None of these are directly spoken about in Scripture, yet we can be guilty of using them to judge ourselves and even others on spiritual well-being.

That’s what religion does for us. It gives us ways we can outwardly conform. But God is not interested in religion. He is interested in the condition of our hearts. Isaiah the prophet was sent to warn the people their religion wasn’t fooling God. “This people draw near with their words and honor Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me,” the Lord told him (Isaiah 29:13, NASB). Israel would soon face discipline for exchanging their faith for works. God is not about religion. He is about the relationship.

Religion can be a dangerous thing. Jesus compared the Pharisees to whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside, but inside filled with dead men’s bones and filth. “So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness,” He charged (Matthew 23:28, NASB). The Pharisees believed their actions made them holy, making them unable to perceive their need of a Savior. They stood proud in their own sufficiency and in turn judged anyone who failed to tow their self-made line.

This is a second danger of religion: the tendency to judge others with our personal expectations. It is a heavy burden to place on someone’s back. Doing so can directly interfere with our given purpose in the body of Christ: to edify fellow believers, not tear them down. Paul urged, “Admonish the unruly, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone.” (1 Thessalonians 5:14, NASB)

How can we avoid setting up false standards for ourselves and placing them on others? We need to ask what really matters to God. We need the Holy Spirit to help us discern between what is a cultural expectation and what is truly sin. Grace should mark the lives of all believers toward each other. Rather than focusing our attentions on outward appearances, we must keep our eyes trained on the One who saved us. Keeping focused on Christ, not on what we or others are doing, will result in encouragements that come from a heart rooted in the love of God.

Steve and I have lived by that wise question Martha repeated in my garden so long ago. It became our battle cry when we entered the world of teen parenting. Is it sin? Wisely set your priorities, choosing a heart which loves God over actions which are nothing more than a to-do list. Don’t waste your time and energy on appearances.

“…For God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the ouward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7, NASB