Hobby Horse Revisited

Sometimes I worry that I come across as a liberal Christian, someone who has abandoned the difficult, absolute biblical truths for less defined, more palatable understandings. I worry because I do afterall, swear and drink and dance and enjoy Bill Bailey. However I categorically believe in: the hopeless sinfulness of all people; Satan's furious work in the world; the coming judgment; Jesus' resurrection from death and faith in him as the only path from hell to a blessed, eternal life. So why am I so free 'n easy in my behaviour and so dogmatic in my beliefs? Am I a hypocrite?

Well I'm hardly the one to answer that question (despite having asked it - how delightfully pomo heh heh) but I try not to be hypocritical. No, the reason I live the way I do is precisely because my faith is all about these really weighty, ultimate things. Weighty, ultimate things do play out in the details of life - it's not that details are unimportant, but rather that Christianity is not about certain conservative cultural practices.

So I swear because I think that the obscene meaning of these words has been lost, leaving only a useful emphatic function. I drink because alcohol is a good gift from God and drunkness, not temperate drinking, is forbidden. I dance because our bodies are important and good, and it is possible for men and women to relate physically without impurity or lust. I enjoy Bill Bailey because he's astute and cheeky, but I hit fastforward when he gets too crass or irreverent.

Being socially conservative doesn't get my knickers in a knot. The sort of things that bother me are lying, thinking lustfully about someone else's husband, abandoning self-control, flaunting my body, jealously, pride, selfishness and unforgiveness. It's my ardent desire not to allow myself any liberality when it comes to these things.

I guess I just hope - and pray - that people don't assume they've got me figured. I hope that, at the very least, I'll puzzle them and get them to think. This Christian faith is not what you might expect. It's a faith in which physical creation is to be celebrated and enjoyed, in which sin is everywhere found but conquered by love, in which the poor in spirit gain the kingdom of heaven.