To Beard or Not to Beard, That is The Question

[votivesoul]

Originally Posted by TK Burk

If you're writing the above with my study in mind I believe you missed an important point--I never said the saints not wearing related gang colors was a Heaven or Hell issue. I said it was to help the saints with their witness to each other and to those outside their fellowship, and it was to protect them from being misidentified and possibly physically harmed or killed. But, as I indicated, this would be a known problem that the Church body could easily understand needed to be remedied.

This type of teaching was necessary to aid the Early Church spread the gospel throughout the various cultures of their world, and this same type of teaching is needed for the Church to do the same work today.

I can only respond little by little at the moment. Perhaps more tomorrow.

I may have missed the part about saints not wearing certain clothing not being a heaven or hell issue, but if I did--I can't say from memory one way or the other at this point--it is only because I don't think it matters one way or the other, in the end. Whatever the intention was, and however it was first received and practiced, heaven and hell aside, extra-Biblical mandates always, and I mean ALWAYS become doctrines that eventually get tied to one's salvation, one way or the other. Every fence gets turned into an ancient landmark and you get the idea. Little calves become sacred cows. It might not be in the first or even second generation, but it inevitably happens.

And that was my whole point about trying to solve church problems by going outside of the Scriptures instead of staying within them.

Complexities like holiness, modesty, church polity and government, ministry, membership and etc. cannot so easily be funneled down into simplicities. They have to be engaged at the same level of analysis as their complexities warrant. A complex problem has to be appreciated for its own nature. Simply mandating "no blue" because the Crips are around, else you might get shot is a too simple solution to the very complex problem of how a church should operate in the world in the face of danger. Just do "this" and all will be well won't work. It certainly doesn't solve the actual problem of gang violence, or how to evangelize gang members, and etc. If anything it might, in the long run, hurt the reputation of the church, because word of the standard will get out to the community, and it will get debated at large by some amount of people outside of the church, and the church may face accusations of kowtowing to the pressures a mere gang placed upon a society or community, or it might be accused of not trusting God alone for protection, or etc.

It is never going to quite play out how the original intentions seemed to suggest. That is the quintessential nature of all things related to extra-Biblical mandates, even ones not designed to have a heaven or hell effect.

All that man touches turns to dust. All that God touches turns to gold. The moment you introduce a man-centered, man-originated, man-created idea into God's eternal plan for the ages, you've added a proportionate level of corruption to the purposes and designs of the Almighty. You've tainted something the Lord will eventually have to work out of His people in order to purify them so that as He presents the church to Himself, He can do so knowing there won't be any spots, wrinkles, or any such things staining or otherwise imperfecting His people.

It has always been this way and it always will be. And in the process of this purification, a lot of people are going to end up hurt, embarrassed, confused, and some yes, even some are going to be lost in the end, not least of which those who took a once upon a time, so-called not "heaven or hell" standard and made it a requirement upon a child of God, threatening exposure and disfellowship and one's right standing with God if not obeyed to the eventual offense and scandalization of a saint in light. These fellows who have done so are the very spots on the church's feast of charity. And if they die or have already died in a place of unrepentance they have every right to wake up in the resurrection in a place of torment.