Legalisms Tickle Ears, Damage People

2Timothy 4:1-5
I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom:

preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

Recovering Grace is again on my heart with this post by Karen,
Here's the Courtship; Where's the Love?

Karen gives her account of legalistic courtship and she shares seven steps, offset by her humor, which thankfully relieves the pain associated with this dating technique gone awry.

Step 1: God reveals to a young man whom he is to marry. Bonus points if he is not attracted to her and/or her existence is pointed out to him by an authority. He cannot, of course, know her well since anything more than a nodding acquaintance with a member of the opposite sex is dangerous. So any confidence he has in proceeding can only come from direct revelation.

I love the "bonus points" humor she adds to her descriptions, as I well understand the ridiculousness of legalists who make up rules as they go.  Everything legalists scheme seems to be one more way to control and manipulate everyone involved.

This subject matter is heavy as all of this (and things like this) have to do with people - real people.  These real people have families, extended families, friends, then spouses, and then families of their own.  Each person, and even people beyond whom I have mentioned, are affected by the initial legalistic teachings which can be devastating and destroying to each and every person involved.

As I grew older and watched others try to follow this procedure, I began to have my doubts. Sometimes parents would be gung ho about “God’s leading” and then a few months later would “no longer have peace” and call it off. Did God really change His mind, or were the parents not quite infallible? Either way, it was harsh for those who had been taught to save themselves emotionally as well as physically for the one-and-only and then saw the whole thing blow up in their face.

Plus, children were supposed to defer to parents because parents were older and wiser and not likely to be moved by such unspiritual, changeable factors as physical attractiveness. But it seemed like parents themselves were often concerned with unspiritual, changeable factors like money or social standing or doctrinal minutiae or losing control.

Karen's main point concerns the legalistic way of courting without allowing a real relationship between the young people.  Getting to know a person was controlled by the leadership, then by the parents.   The single person was treated as if they can not think, reason, decide.  This is far beyond listening or requesting wise advice.  With the skewed way of letting the list,* and then parents, be in control and not letting the young couple naturally get to know each other (as if this was evil), Karen reveals the problems which contributed to early marriage relationship.

Just at the point in our lives when we were supposed to be leaving our old families and forging a new one—just when we should have been treated as full adults—we were treated as young children again. We had rules we had to follow. Parental approval to win. We could have fought it, but we didn’t. We just complied.

In the process, we learned not to talk to God and each other to make decisions. Instead of finding out how we wanted to do things, we just did as we’d been told. It took us years of marriage to learn to actually talk to each other about major decisions.

The Bible says the goal is to leave the old family and cleave to each other. Courtship taught us that the goal was to please our old families and hold back from each other. The wedding didn’t flip a magic switch that changed that dynamic.

I write this not to depress anyone (even myself---argh!), but to remind each of us that there are hurting people out there.  The "church," with its legalisms, has hurt so many no matter how well meaning anyone has been.

Handmaidens, we rub shoulders with those hurt people.  Some of us are those hurt people so we well know the agony and damage that comes from wrong teachings.  No matter if we are the hurt or we know the hurt, we can walk alongside and mentor those who have been deceived in legalistic teachings.  Many, many times legalistic teachings cripple or side line Christians in their faith for a life time.   We need only to open our eyes so we can see the spiritually wounded.  Let us show Jesus' compassion, full of grace and mercy with His truth.

*Ahh---the list.  The list is ever changing.  The list is different for every legalist.  The list is always nagging and pulling at the deceived.  The list never lets the deceived be free.  The list draws deceived away from God.  The list replaces, or eventually replaces, the Holy Spirit as the deceived do not have to rely on God, but rely the list.  The list is a red flag.  Beware of any list.  Be a Berean and search the scriptures daily.

Acts 17:10-1
The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews.  Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.  Therefore many of them believed, along with a number of prominent Greek women and men.