Safety with Rules....

Over the past week or so, I've been reading quite a bit of Cold War historiography. One thing I've found striking, and a possible parallel with how many churches and Christians behave, is the notion that adding rules to create safety creates a more dangerous situation.

From what I've read, US policy makers "added," if you will, more and more burdens on politicians and citizens during the Cold War era, for the purpose of creating a safer nation, but at the same time, people were burdened by an even greater sense of danger.

In the church this works out in several ways. Ministers and lay people have their hobby horse, so they create a rule to safeguard whatever their particular conviction is, regardless of the truth of the matter. It looks different in whatever situation it may be, but it leads to the same result. In the end, you have a christian who thinks their more spiritual because of their added rules and morality, when they are slaved to them and if, God forbid, they break one of their extra rules, they are convicted by themselves, by the rule, not by God, though they feel it.

So much for no condemnation for those who are in Christ (Rom 8:1).