Make a New Normal

Without moderation

Without Moderation

Without Moderation

You’ve no doubt heard this encouragement: everything in moderation.  This is especially attractive in the church, where the every “thing” in question is likely to be that assorted list of “sins” that you just can’t help yourself with.  That list has tough stuff on it, but also seemingly small things:

  1. alcohol
  2. smoking
  3. dancing   (which actually just confuses most of us; seriously “dancing?”)
  4. gossip
  5. vanity
  6. craigslist/eBay

And before you know it, you have left the realm of absolutes and entered into that gray area where people stop feeling comfortable calling something “sinful”.  For instance,

  • the person obsessed with body image spends more time at the gym than anywhere else
  • in looking for a healthy alternative, the person grabs onto every fad diet, yoyoing in weight every time
  • in caring for her children’s spiritual health, the mother stops engaging in church herself
  • in trying to care for his family, the husband works hours in which he isn’t able to see any of them.

Even though the second group rarely makes people’s lists of “sins”, they are much more sin-full than the previous list.  That’s because of obsession–something that is certainly not a moderating force.

But here is where I throw all of that out the window.

Jesus never preached moderation.  Seriously.  He never preached chastity and abstinence and keeping it to one glass.  Nothing.  That’s the puritans.

Jesus preached about being obsessed with God and justice and mercy.  He spoke about our zealous relationship, not primarily to the rules, but to one another.  He encourages bold thinking and demands that we get rid of our adult arrogance and adorn the wonder of children.

Moderation is the enemy of faith.

The problem isn’t moderation vs. excess, but what you are zealous for.  Jesus turned water into wine in that famous wedding scene, to both spare the dignity of the host and to keep people having a good time!  The problem is that most of our obsessions aren’t about loving God or loving our neighbor.  We’re more obsessed with all the junk we can accumulate or how we compare with our neighbors.  That’s sin.  We obsess about keeping the wrong people from getting married or preventing family planning.  That’s sin.  We obsess over making people pay for their mistakes, even when we are the only ones who think a mistake was even made, including God.  That’s sin.

If we need to moderate anything, moderate judgment, hypocrisy, insensitivity, abuse, and vindictiveness.  But love, passion for God, support of friends and strangers, unleash that!  Get rid of the gauge you use to measure that.  Just love as God loves–ridiculously and generously–without moderation.

[Note: Written in response to a Daily Post about moderation.]

2 responses

  1. Drew,
    Every year, around Thanksgiving Day, a Congregationalist friend of mine used to make the point that the Pilgrims (the first Congregationalists) liked colorful clothes, dancing, and lots of beer. The Puritans were another sort all together. Straight-laced, sober, and inclined to use laws to make sure the other guy was too. Both were hardworking people of faith, but they were very different.
    Isn’t it interesting that Americans today confuse and conflate the two cultural icons? It makes us blind to the inconsistancies. We’ve bought into materialism but feel guilty about it. Our religion won’t support materialism so we become judgemental… but transfer the guilt to the “other guy.”
    Tom

    1. Drew Downs Avatar
      Drew Downs

      You are right! We seem to simplify into singular blocks (eg. Founding fathers as unified) to speak about what we all were like back then and also into two blocks (eg. Federalist and anti-federalists) to speak about dualistic conflict. As we both know, there were Anglicans and Roman Catholics also joining the mix in the early 17th Century colonies, meaning even more religious voices then we are comfortable affirming.

      I think the conflating of the multiple voices may have been an intentional byproduct of the fight for dominance by Puritan communities which seem, even today, to demand that they properly define Christianity and orthodoxy to the exclusion of others. It actually seems like a political action to me.

      Thanks for the comment!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.