Gunny Explains Why He Would Rather Have Alcoholics in His Church Than Legalists

Gunny:

“Which would you rather have in your church, legalists or alcoholics?”

For discussion purposes, I’m defining legalist in the following manner:

“A legalist [in the realm of the biblical Christian] is one who elevates human rules/laws to the point where they are equated to or trump God’s laws, considering violation of those human precepts to be sinful when done by others.”

In other words, it’s calling something sin that the Bible does not, particularly in the lives of others. I have no problem, for example, with a person making a rule for himself/herself to help prevent sin, but it becomes legalism when others are held to that rule as well. For example, it may be wise to say, “To avoid being drunk, I will never drink.”

That being said, we return to the original question:

“Which would you rather have in your church, legalists or alcoholics?”

There’s no doubt in my mind. I would rather have alcoholics in my church and for the following reasons:

Click here to read how Gunny defends his position.

Scattered thoughts from Chris:

1. I might add to the definition of legalism, “a person who finds his or her spiritual identity in a partial set of rules that he or she keeps.”  A legalistic person might be one who feels good about himself for not getting drunk, even though he is being unfaithful to his wife all the while.
2. The longer I pastor, the more I see how destructive alcoholism or other addictions can be.
3. Still, I’m with Gunny.  Legalism is a particularly ugly and dangerous sin for the local church and for parenting.  Nothing drives children from the faith quite like legalism.  If your goal in life is for your children to despise Christianity and to pursue immorality, then I can think of no more effective strategy than legalism.
4. Jesus (Luke 23) and Paul (Galatians 3:1ff) despised legalism.