Copyright by Shea Oakley<\/p>\n
All rights reserved<\/p>\n
1 Timothy 5:17 in the RSV Bible tells us that God \u201crichly furnishes us with everything to enjoy\u201d. It would appear that He approves of pleasure. This makes perfect sense considering that it was He who designed us with the capacity to enjoy pleasure in the first place.<\/p>\n
This sometimes seems to have been lost on certain self-appointed guardians of biblical morality. These are the people who will tell you things not specifically prohibited in the Scriptures ought to be.\u00a0 Four examples might be the practices of smoking of any kind, drinking alcohol and dancing. Each of these activities is frowned upon by many conservative Christians. In fact the author attended a Christian College in the Eastern United States which prohibited all three activities. At the time I was a new believer coming out of a worldly lifestyle and thought the rules very appropriate for Christian higher education. It contrasted strongly with the secular Florida \u201cparty school\u201d I had previously attended, and that was just fine with me.<\/p>\n
In the 25 years since then my point of view has slowly changed, partially from beginning to learn the difference between legalism and grace, and partially from discerning the difference between license and Christian freedom. I make a conscious effort to no longer automatically judge a person\u2019s spiritual depth based on whether they enjoy a glass of wine at dinner or the occasional cigar after it. Moreover If they then decide to dance the rest of the night away I will not assume they are the dreaded \u201cCarnal Christians\u201d (an oxymoron; or so we are told by fundamentalists) who some of us decide are sliding down \u201cthe slippery slope.\u201d<\/p>\n
It might surprise many Evangelicals to know that a man who is very highly esteemed among us as a model believer, the late Christian author and apologist C.S. Lewis, was a cigarette smoker.\u00a0 Then too there is Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation. He was a man who had no compunction about drinking a little good German beer and, apparently, more than a little on some occasions. As for dancing we can look to the Bible itself and the person described there as \u201ca man after God\u2019s own heart\u201d, namely King David. In 2nd<\/sup> Samuel 6:16 he returns from a victorious battle \u201cleaping and dancing before the Lord\u201d.<\/p>\n Now this is not to say that any of these things are without spiritual or physical danger. While the Scripture does not mention anything about smoking specifically it definitely has much to say about taking care of our bodies, God\u2019s temples on Earth (and Lewis, by the way, was not proud of his habit). Alcoholic beverages are not condemned by the Word of God but drinking to get drunk certainly is. As for dancing, Christians need to discern between the legitimate expression of the art form and the overtly sexual bumping and grinding set to music that is so common today.<\/p>\n These, though, are often questions of moderation and self-control, not prohibition. We serve a God whose \u201cgood pleasure\u201d it is to give us the things of the Kingdom. Under Christ\u2019s Lordship our minds, bodies and spirits are meant to fully enjoy the many good gifts He has given us while we sojourn in our temporal home on Earth. This is part of the abundant life that is the earthly inheritance of every believer, and no arbitrary man-made law should stand in the way of God\u2019s children receiving that inheritance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved 1 Timothy 5:17 in the RSV Bible tells us that God \u201crichly furnishes us with everything to enjoy\u201d. It would appear that He approves of pleasure. This makes perfect sense considering that it was He who designed us with the capacity to enjoy pleasure in the first place.… <\/p>\n