Make This Your General Rule of Thumb When Binding the Conscience of Others

“The only safe way to ensure that we are not binding everyone’s consciences on matters that Jesus doesn’t is to ask ourselves one simple question: Could every believer, in every place, across all time, people’s and cultures, both now and forever, do this thing?”

(Stephen Kneale – Building Jerusalem) You don’t have to be around Christians very long before you hear someone saying, ‘do you really think you should be doing that?’ or, perhaps less frowny, ‘shouldn’t you really ought to be doing this as a Christian?’….

I purposefully keep this loosely worded because ‘that’ and ‘this’ could be populated by so many things. Of the things with which to make others feel guilty there appears to be no end!

Of course, we shouldn’t ignore the fact that the Bible does have commands. ‘Do not lie’ is pretty cut and dry, isn’t it? If you’re a liar, it’s not unreasonable to hear a Christian say, ‘do you really think you ought to be doing that?’ There are also positive commands too. There is no ignoring, ‘do not forsake the meeting together of yourselves, as is the habit of some’. If you belong to the some, you should expect a Christian to reasonably say to you, ‘shouldn’t you really ought to be doing this as a Christian?’ There are commands in scripture that the Lord expects us to do and those things which he clearly doesn’t want to do. It isn’t legalism for believers to point out what Jesus has said he expects of his followers and at least ask, shouldn’t Christians be doing what Jesus wants them to do?  View article →