Celebrating Guardrails- Part 1

I don’t want to pretend that I am some master of church history or have some special insight into culture that others do not have. Yet, it seems to me that over my lifetime I have watched some well-meaning people confuse some really important concepts. One of the concepts is the basis for the name of my blog.

Rules are essential to healthy relationships. They guide us, inform us, motivate us, even correct us, but it is also essential to remember that rules aren’t the purpose of the relationship. The relationship is the goal, the rules just help that relationship work better. Using the analogy of the guardrails, they are there to keep you on the road, to make the trip safer. Most of us don’t drive through a new area and say, “Wow, did you see that guardrail? That was the most spectacular guardrail I have ever seen.” We focus on many other things. But if we lose control of our vehicle the guardrail is there to stop us from going over the edge.

As I watch conservative Christianity (this is where I live and Pastor) struggle with cultural challenges I have noticed a couple of responses:

1. On one hand some will celebrate a certain guardrail. They pose for pictures next to the rail, they get others to commit to loving that rail, and anyone else who isn’t at the same rail is heading down the wide path to destruction. This position is extremely vigilant in one area, and the other areas are of little significance.
2. The second view thinks that we should remove all guardrails. Everything is good and fine and we won’t fail so we don’t need any rails to protect us.
3. A third view would be one of making as many rails as possible. If it is good to have one rail, it must be better to have 10,000 of them. The rails don’t even have to be found in the Bible, they can be extra, as long as we have a lot of rails we are going to be just fine.
4. A fourth view is rail smashing. The goal of this view is to find as many rails as possible that others have and run them over just to prove they didn’t need the rail anyway. It isn’t good enough, according to this view, to have freedom, I must make you know my freedom as well.

There are some many other views that I can list here, but that is the major ones. Although they are all vastly different than each other, they all have at least one thing in common: they all make the rail the goal.  

Let’s take a look at a biblical example of this in John 8:1-12 (click the reference to read the passage).

Here in the passage, we find a group of religious leaders celebrating a rule. It is a good rule, it is a healthy rule, but they have absolutely no concern for the woman, just the rule. They aren’t pleading with her to let God change her life, they just want the rule enforced.

In their attempt to enforce the rule, they also want to see how Christ will respond. After asking a few times, Jesus responds with, “the person without sin should cast the first stone.” Notice Jesus didn’t even mention the rule, He simply pointed out that everyone there was a rule-breaker. That phrase has been repeated much in the defense of the no guardrail position, but Jesus did not remove the requirement to obey God’s rules. He says to the woman, “go and sin no more.” Jesus puts the focus on her changing. There is much to be said on this topic, but I save it for the next post.

Part 2 will be coming soon!