The greatest threat to spiritual life and psychological health is not license. It is legalism. It destroys the quality of spiritual life and the integrity of the human spirit like nothing else can. While legalism is the most dangerous of spiritual enemies, it is also the most pervasive; swelling its threat exponentially. There is likely no Christian alive who has not been touched by it at some level.

If this is true, then this insidious spiritual disease is an appropriate subject for study. Much has been written on both sides of the issue. Authors have complained about the rules of religion while others are prophets of obedience. Those, like Freud, who see religion as a compulsive pathology, who note only its conventions, or "ceremonials," as he likes to call them; tend to write the Christian faith off, not as irrelevant, but as destructive. On the other side of the issue, Fr. Franklyn McAfee is typical in his observation that "We have a problem with surrender to God today because we have a problem with obedience, and we have a problem with obedience because we place ourselves first."

Solomon offers a bit of practical wisdom for both sides:

"Do not be over righteous . . . why destroy yourself? Do not be overwicked . . . why die before your time?"

The roots of legalism go back a long way. For millennia past remembering, men have sought structure for their lives. They have wanted to know the "rules." This gives one a certain (and possibly false) sense of security. If you know the rules, you know what to do. You are in control.

Adam sought these selfsame rules. He did not need to know good and evil, he had only to love. But he was drawn to the possibilities of such knowledge. He was as susceptible to the suggestion of the serpent as was Eve. The serpent suggested that power and influence -- control -- was at the heart of the knowledge of good and evil. To know the rules meant to control. Like God himself controls.

It is remarkable if not ironic that God waited thousands of years before he finally provided the human race with a set of laws. And then it seemed their purpose was to demonstrate that humans, no matter how devout, could not keep them. Even Kant, also frustrated by this, thought that moral laws exist a priori in pure human reason. Of these laws he noted, " . . . these laws require a judgment sharpened by experience, in order on the one hand to distinguish in what cases they are applicable, and on the other to procure for them access to the will of the man, and effectual influence on conduct; since man is acted on by so many inclinations that, though capable of the idea of a practical pure reason, he is not so easily able to make it effective in concreto in his life."

Men seek to control others with law. This passion for control is the essence of what God calls sin. Without it, the secular ethic cannot thrive. Without it, organized religion cannot survive. Jesus did not come to this earth to found a great religion. He came because God looked upon this planet, and loved it.

The tension between true spiritual health and health defined by religious law is devastating to the human psyche. Christians are haunted by the burden of guilt they impose upon themselves and that imposed by others. Guilt over their sins. Guilt over their mistakes. They feel rejected by God, frustrated by their inability to live perfect lives, judged by their Christian friends and by their religious community. They come to be counseled by their pastor who is quick to point out the sin in their lives, or to a therapist who is ignorant of what sin is and could care less. The gates of hell may not be able to prevail against the church, but its legalism renders it sick and almost dysfunctional.

None of this is to say that the Law of God is abrogated in the slightest. The eternal Principles are as eternal as his nature. Yet how to comprehend these principles within the context of grace has been the pestilential concern. Perhaps Kant is right when he suggests that "while we do not comprehend the practical unconditional necessity of the moral imperative, we yet comprehend its incomprehensibility, and this is all that can be fairly demanded of a philosophy which strives to carry its principles up to the very limit of human reason." To know that where sin abounds, grace abounds much more and to know that to resist sin is preferable to sinning so as to provide an opportunity for grace, provides the central riddle of Christendom.

Legalism Defined:

Legalism is a philosophy of religious practice wherein faith is expressed by adherence to a command and obedience infrastructure.

Of course, it is only attempted adherence, and it is more sophistry than philosophy. But we define it so owing to the fact that legalism represents a point of view. A philosophical stance of perspective. That perspective is to view relationship with God through the lens of obedience. A distinctive of this view is that short of obedience, relationship is severely fractured at best and does not exist at worst.

To the extent that a believer perceives God (and his representatives: e.g., any human religious authority) as a Commander and himself as an obeyer; to that extent, he is a legalist. If the foundational structure of his faith is built on this legal paradigm, then by definition, he is a legalist. Or perhaps it would be kinder to say that his faith is suffering from the disease of legalism.

"Obedience:" Buzzword of Legalism.

Some might argue that the sanction of religious law is the loss of eternal life; or that its sanction is loss of fellowship with God. There are compelling and definitive scriptures that indicate that once obtained, eternal life cannot be lost and that fellowship with God cannot be statically compromised. As a Christian, what is going to happen to me if I do not obey God? Will God take me to the woodshed? Will he stop loving me? Worse yet, will he withdraw? Perhaps I shall be "chastised." How? Have you ever been so chastised? If so, how specifically did you know your chastisement was from God? If you are honest, you will admit that your "knowledge" of this is based on your own beliefs. You believe you were chastised by him. To say the least, this does not prove it or make it fact.

Perhaps I shall be "disciplined" by my church. This is a sanction indeed, and perhaps public, religious censure might have meaning for me. But suppose it does not? Suppose I simply find a home of loving, accepting people in a different church? How have I been materially harmed? The quality of my life and spiritual experience might actually improve!

The issue of church discipline sensitively and lovingly carried out with restoration as its objective is certainly biblical and legitimate. This an issue however, which will be dealt with in a later article. Divine "chastisement" on the other hand, is somewhat more vague. Negative, painful experiences are part of every human life, not just those of believers. How are we to know which are "punishments" from God and which are not? The simple fact of the matter is that it is impossible to know with certainty. The NIV rendering of Hebrews 12:7 is most unfortunate, "Endure hardship as discipline." Are we to assume that the hardship endured by a believer is from God, and this same "rain" which falls on a non-believer is not?

The most reasonable approach to this issue is to acknowledge that bad things happen to all people. It also seems reasonable to not identify these bad things as punishment from God, although most of us do. I prefer to believe two things; One, that we are smart enough to learn from our mistakes so as not to repeat them and two, that the Holy Spirit provides gentle, loving guidance in those choices which would help us avoid wrongdoing. I have not met a Christian yet that needed to be told they were sinning. Everything inside us screams to return to the place of peace that a clear conscience brings. What causes us to break is exposure to God's acceptance and love. It is pointless to try to identify painful circumstances as some form of retribution.

That obedience teachings are singularly not helpful in the development of healthy spirituality, is seen in the toxicity of the faith of those who attempt it. Adherence to religious structural imperatives has never brought a single soul to God, or made a single believer more acceptable.

Response to love has.

We do not obey because we love. Love transcends mere obedience; mere conformity. Love is a response, like exhaling is a response to inhaling. Love is all consuming. Action is derived from love and so upholds eternal principles and is not subject to them. Rather, the Law of God is subject to Love. Over and over again this is demonstrated in the life and teachings of Jesus. "Man is not made for the sabbath," said he, "but the Sabbath for man."

God is Love. When love is defined by its biblical paradigm, Love is God. The appropriate response to eternal principles is not rote obedience, but action flowing from a central core of love for God and man. Any human relational action that is not of love and compassion, is not of God.

Now, by what means does man deliver himself from this state of disunion between himself and the perfect being, from the painful consciousness of sin, from the distressing sense of his own nothingness? How does he blunt the fatal sting of sin? Only by this; that he is conscious of love as the highest, the absolute power and truth . . .

No man is sufficient for the law which moral perfection sets before us; but, for that reason neither is the law sufficient for man, for the heart. The law condemns; the heart has compassion even on the sinner. The law affirms me only as an abstract being, -- love, as a real being. Love gives me the consciousness that I am a man; the law only the consciousness that I am a sinner, that I am worthless. The law holds man in bondage; love makes him free.

At this juncture, let us return to Freud. Here is a man who is revered as the father of modern psychiatry. That he was important, we cannot doubt. That much of what he taught us has merit, even his harshest and most adamant critics will acknowledge. But for all of his writings about love, Freud never understood it. He at least taught us to think about it. He taught us, as did Jesus, to approach love with awe and worship.

But sadly, as Francis Schaeffer points out, Freud, not really believing in love -- saying that the end of all things is sex, but yet needing real love -- writes to his fiancee, "When you come to me, little Princess, love me irrationally." I have often said that no sadder word could be written, coming from such a man as Freud. Freud himself at this particular place comes to what I would call a shuddering standstill. He is damned by what he is, by the emotions of real love in himself, because he has been made in the image of God.

Neither did Freud understand faith. The idea of relationship with God was totally beyond him. Freud was a consistent, aggressive, dogmatic atheist, a child of the Enlightenment who saw a world at war to the death between science and religion. To study religion, he was convinced, one must take a stand outside it: only the unbeliever can truly understand belief. One may indeed study religion from outside it, but one will never gain an understanding of it from that position any more than one can understand swimming without getting wet. The notion that "only the unbeliever can truly understand belief" is hopelessly oxymoronic.

The Fascination for Religious Rules

Adam apparently had a hungry heart, too. He wanted to know good and evil. Something God expressly told him to ignore. He bought the line that the reason God told him this was out of petty jealously; God did not want Adam to be like him. The truth is, God was protecting Adam from a fate worse than death (which, by the way, he got). He was also providing Adam an opportunity to test a quality no other creature possessed -- free will. Adam had the whole of creation to enjoy, but he became fascinated, obsessed if you will, with the desire to know good from evil.

The story has been told from a thousand pulpits how babies are like that. Tell them not to touch a certain thing and the moment they aren't being watched -- and sometimes when they are -- their fascination with the prohibition is overwhelming. They cannot resist.

Unfortunately, people are starving today for "answers." The problems they face in the age of complexity are greater than the human capacity to cope. If any religious leader comes along, he can sell the worst kind of snake oil imaginable to hungry believers who have yet to discover a functional relationship with God.

Gothard and others like him preach faith as form; structure. People flock to it because they see such form as the "answer" to their dysfunctional lives. They have not discovered the core and foundational being of love and how it affects behavior. They have not discovered it or they do not believe it. In either case, they have succumbed to the paralyzing disease of legalism.

When religious addicts create a toxic faith system, God is lost in the process. In God's place, rules are implemented that serve only to further the empire of religious addiction. As new people come into the toxic faith system, they are indoctrinated into the rules rather than strengthened in a relationship with God. The rules reinforce addiction, not faith. Addiction leads to conformity to a predictable pattern of behavior, often blocking faithful following of God. It is hard for these toxic faith practitioners to realize that Christ put down the rigid, legalistic system of the religion of His day.

They become even more dysfunctional. It is not long before they learn that consistent application of the formulistic, sequential steps they were taught in the seminars do not work. They are far too simplistic to apply uniformly to life's multitude of complexities. And sadly, their faith becomes so deformed and twisted by the mountains of rules, formulas and "answers," that if it were possible, they would abandon it altogether. They drown in their mishnas.

It is appalling that the one thing Jesus said sets believers apart from non-believers is so profoundly discounted. The quintessential irony is that believers wish to become like non-believers: governed by law instead of love and grace. It is painfully obvious that if people learned to love and respect one another; if people perceived one another through the eyes of compassion; if people actually followed the "golden rule," there would be no need for the making of laws. Plainly, there is a compelling need for civil and criminal law. But the people of God should not philosophically identify with this secular ethic. Believers should lead the way and help the spiritually impoverished to know that we are "Christians" by our love. A love demonstrated by acts of love toward them and toward our relationships with each other.

The fundamental reason for the existence of denominations is due to legalism. "Our rules are different from your rules. It only follows that our rules are superior to your rules." The Body of Christ has not benefitted from our denominational distinctives. The institutional church does a lot of good. Generally speaking, it is a positive thing to belong to a church. God perhaps does his greatest work in that framework. However, we must concede that this may not be due to the organization so much as it is the fact that the organized church is where all the believers are. It is not hard to imagine that if they were less institutionalized (read industrialized), they would be happier, more functional and more effective.

Has Obedience to Religious Law Ever Worked?

The Law has served abundantly well to demonstrate that we need the redemption that belief in the death, burial and resurrection in Jesus Christ brings. The Law has indeed brought us to Christ. Without it, we might have missed him. With it, we see how evil we are and how desperately we need his love, forgiveness and grace. In this the Law has succeeded beyond our ability to imagine.

Now having been accepted by God in this grace, the Law no longer functions as a standard by which believers are measured. When faced with a moral choice, the force of love compels us to choose right instead of wrong. But if we do not, the Law will not crush us because it has already crushed Christ. We are forgiven. We are picked up, brushed off and encouraged to go and sin no more. If we do, we are picked up again and told the same thing. And again. And again, ad infinitum.

Relaxing with Depravity:

That we are a sinful people, that I am a sinful man is a fait accompli -- an established fact. Francis Schaeffer observes: "In the area of morality, . . . man cannot escape the fact of the motions of a true right and wrong in himself; not just a sociological or hedonistic morality, but true morality, true right and true wrong. And yet beginning with himself he cannot bring forth absolute standards and cannot even keep the poor relative ones he has set up. Thus in the area of morality, as in rationality, trying to be what he is not, as he was made to be in relationship to God, he is crushed and damned by what he is."

Why do we as believers "try to be what we are not?" Why do we struggle? Why do we fight this fight? It is a lost cause. We will never win it. We cannot be anything other than what we are. If that is true, then we must accept it if we are ever going to transcend it.

Paul the apostle observed, "By the grace of God, I am what I am." In this remark he was not boasting of his person or position. He was not boasting at all for it follows upon these words, "For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God." This man who could never do what he wanted to do and often did what he did not want to do came to rest only in his relationship with Christ. He learned this, ostensibly from God. He told the Corinthian believers of his struggle:

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

With convincing erudition and acumen Feuerbach notes, "But I cannot have the idea of moral perfection without at the same time being conscious of it as a law for me. Moral perfection depends, at least for the moral consciousness, not on the nature, but on the will -- it is a perfection of will, perfect will. I cannot conceive perfect will, the will which is in unison with law, which is itself law, without at the same time regarding it as an object of will, i.e., as an obligation for myself. The conception of the morally perfect being is no merely theoretical, inert, conception, but a practical one, calling me to action, to imitation, throwing me into strife, into disunion with myself; for while it proclaims to me what I ought to be, it also tells me to my face, without any flattery, what I am not."

We are indeed, what we are -- and that by the grace of God. We will never be any different because of our weak attempts to observe perfect standards. If a choice is to be made between Law and Love, we must choose Love. That is what Jesus did repeatedly. We can only do what sinful people do who in some measure allow the Holy Spirit to empower them.

"We can say personality is shown by that which thinks, acts, and feels. Let us think of acting. Here is will and action -- but everything cuts across my will. I would do a certain thing, but I cannot put my will into infinite action, unlimited action. Even in the small area of a painter's canvas, I cannot do it. I cannot have an unlimited action in the smallest things of life, let alone the largest. And so if I am demanding infinite freedom, whether it is in the whole of life, or in a small area of life, I cannot have it; I cannot be God in action and practice. So again I fall to the earth, crushed with natural tensions in myself, and I lie there like a butterfly that someone has touched, with all the lovely things gone from its wings."

God expects us to sin. "He knows our frame, that we are but dust." notes the psalmist. God is relaxed with the fact that we are sinful because he has cared for it in the death of his Son. There is nothing left for us to do but to understand this basic truth from the Old Testament:

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

"When a frightened or injured child gives himself over to his mother, comes to her and is wrapped in her loving arms, he possesses greater security than he will ever know as an adult. There may be a very ferocious storm and gale-like winds pounding against the walls of the house, lightning turning the sky to moments of fire and thunder shaking every bone in his body, but the child will not fear. He is safe, he is secure. He has surrendered himself to his loving mother and places all his confidence and trust in her." -- Fr. Franklyn McAfee.

Lord, how many times have I taken your Word and made it law when You gave it in love?

How often do You show me what's available, just because You love me and I assume that You've imposed on me another standard by which I am supposed to live?

How often have I taken the "Creator's Manual" that shows me how to be happy and live successfully and used it as though You intended it to be a ring in my snout?

What's wrong with me?

Is it a result of Adam's sin that men are drawn to restriction rather than living securely in freedom?

Is it a part of the curse that I should not know instantly that my Creator desires only happiness for His Beloved?

Or, is it that I really don't understand love?

Lord, teach me more about loving the way You love.

Teach me not to make judgements of others' decisions or actions nor to judge myself because not even You, who has the right, will judge me -- ever.

Help me learn that the things You ask of me are only for the purpose of giving me the best; that You are not at all interested in obedience for obedience sake.

I don't have to. I get to!

Your love is not dependent on my performance. You delight in me when I am free to be what I am.

Knowing this causes me to spontaneously respond to you. It frees me to be truly authentic, truly transparent, teachable and happy.

Then is seen the unmistakable family resemblance between a very unique God and his very unique child. -- Bonnie Morris, 1985.