I've not tried to hide the fact that I used to be very outward focused on my ideas about what spirituality was supposed to look like. Over the first decade of my Christian life I acquired a long list of things I decided that my family would and wouldn't do from avoiding modern Christian music to not having a Christmas tree. Many of these things I find myself smiling about today. Of course, we still hold firmly to the convictions we have against clear cut areas of sin but natural growth and spiritual maturity have lead us to drop many of these opinion based, personal preferences down to a place of less importance in our lives. I've personally been the one to jump up and down about people who "threw all their standards away" and now the topic seems a lot more complex. Are there some times when dropping some standards might be a good thing?
One of the first areas that springs to mind is young people reaching adulthood and leaving home. Countless times I've watched the children of pastors, preachers, and missionaries leave home and "throw all their standards away." I've watched onlookers shake their heads, run them down, and start discussions in prayer rooms about how much these young hopefuls backslid and dropped the ball when they left home but is that really what happened? Very rarely, and usually only accompanied by extreme spiritual discouragement, have I seen a Christian take a conviction that God put on his heart and just lay it down and walk away from it. The case with many of these young people is that these supposed standards were never theirs to begin with. Once they stepped out from under the pressure of mom and dad the importance placed on these areas, whatever they may have been, fell away. Sure, this can be a dangerous time in this young adult's life but it is also crucial for their personal walk with Christ and its development. The real problem is that if a heart issue did exist in the child before it left home that we were all too satisfied with the facades to ever spot it. Now, for the first time in that young person's life they are being who they truly are and ultimately Jesus has something He can actually work with. There is no high premium in scripture for hypocrites no matter how much religious training they exemplify on the outside.
The next area that comes to mind is just plain and simple spiritual maturity. Take my little girl for example. When she first started talking and conversing with people she was not allowed to use the word "hate" at all. A two year old cannot fathom the gravity and weight that such a little word like that can carry. Now that she is fixing to turn five she uses the word nearly weekly as she tells her mommy "I hate that you hurt your finger" or "I hate that we aren't getting to see Grandma today." My little girl didn't digress morally because she began using the word that she originally had been taught against. No, maturity gave her the balance she needed to move forward and learn to use that word correctly. Many of the preferences I held to in the first season of my spiritual walk kept me out of a lot of trouble and helped me to grasp the importance of purity. Many of the standards I held drew strict lines in the sand to keep my flesh from areas that I had not developed temperance to handle. I'm not crawling any more though. In fact, I'm not even toddling. As a Christian I am now on my feet walking and eating meat. Do I have a lot to learn? Oh, of course! Until the day I die I'll have a lot to learn but I can now discern things that as a weaker Christian I was "not able to bear." This example holds true in my own home where many of the gates we put in front of the stairs, the padding we placed around the brick on the fireplace, and the locks on the kitchen cabinets are now gone simply because maturity has deemed them no longer necessary for my children. This same sort of scenario exists in the spiritual relm.
The last area that comes to my mind is religious peer pressure. I've been on the receiving end and on the giving end of this one. New believers need to be discipled but there is a fine line that can sometimes be crossed when we take areas that may be common practice to our particular genre of Christianity or to us personally and prioritize them over the black and white areas of scripture that actually need to be taught. The intentions and motives behind such practices are not always bad but it is dangerous to say the least because it can easily become a "grievous weight" or an area of bondage in that Christian's life. Everybody wants to fit in with the Christians after they get saved but the bar must be set as Christ and revealed as a level no man has reached! These standards that carry political weight in an assembly are most always bringing glory to a man somewhere that is thought to be the bar. Once a person loses faith in that man or manmade system these types of standards always come down because they were a result of pressure and not spirituality. At this point, a man can rebuild on the right foundation and have a real grasp of who God is. Just because one of these brothers or sisters doesn't recover and land exactly back where we are on all of our personal preferences doesn't mean he or she isn't right with God and no longer deserves respect. In fact, what you see on the outside now is what was probably in the heart all along. The only difference is that this person is no longer afraid of what you think about them. Keep in mind that we have our own spirituality overvalued when we use it as leverage to look down our noses at anyone.
We feel safer when we think everything has to be black and white but the beauty of grace is how personal it is. Most of the time it takes a lot of private prayer and meditation for God to be able to reveal to me exactly where I am. I tend to be biased towards myself and my view of who I really am usually winds up clouded. When I realize the immense amount of effort that I have to exert just to sort through my motives, my crutches, my vices, my insecurities, and all of my intricate internal workings I quickly realize that it would be absolutely impossible for me to look at you and know where you are in this process. As Christians we just have to love each other and trust that the Father is doing the necessary work in each of His children's lives. In every one of the above scenarios we find real people with real needs for love and friendship. We will either be the friends these people need or we will allow our own selfish agendas to cause damage and hurt and no good ever comes from that. When our motives are wrong we will often be quick to misjudge the motives of others. Romans two abrasively reminds us that it is the goodness of God that shapes a man and that we should be careful not to despise His long-suffering nature. Mine and your lives are like 1,000 piece puzzles that the Master is assembling. Unfortunately, the onlookers around us usually only have a clear view of three or four of those pieces at a time.
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