I grew up as a legalist. I don’t blame anyone for this, and I think that it wasn’t a bad thing for me, where I was mentally and spiritually. Before I get too much into that, let me define my terms a little bit. I say that I was a legalist because I believed that actions, in and of themselves, were either good or bad. They were good if the moral code I had been taught said they were good, or vice versa. I was quite extreme in this belief. Often, my parents would try to direct me in another way by reminding me that there needed to be gray, but my black and white world would have none of it. To me the only alternative was no moral code at all, a rampant point of view in today’s society, and I knew that I could not go there.

At that stage in my life, I needed those boundaries. I still found plenty of opportunities to push past and live outside of those boundaries, but there is something comforting, especially in adolescence, about the limits in our lives. In the areas of my life I feel are still underdeveloped, like finances (see last week’s post), I still appreciate those limits, even if I don’t like them. They are as much guideposts as they are fence posts.

In my full time internship after college, I had my first experience of being challenged not only on what I believed, but why. Through the mentoring aspect of the job, I began learning the process of apologetics, defending what I believe. Being in seminary has continued this process. I have been challenged to understand my convictions far more than I thought I would. In terms of the legalism, this semester was the first time I recognized it in myself and saw that I had been moving away from it over the past year.

This started in my reassessing of the process of salvation, what it really means to be a Christian, and other big theological questions (perhaps I will write on some of these topics in the future). Along with my Ethics class, I began to re-work through my personal concepts of good, that is God’s will, and bad, or sin. The idea of spirit of the law versus letter of the law has become my base for considering the question of obedience.

Where then have I come to? I believe that everything we do can be considered either right or wrong, but that judgment is entirely centered in the character of God and not within the action itself. For something to be right, it must conform to the character and will of God. When something violates the character and/or will of God it is wrong.

I don’t claim to have the right answer, but merely want to share the journey I have been on. This truth has greatly influenced many of my views on a whole range of topics, and as I continue to be led into these new revelations (new for me, that is), I look forward to the new things God has in store.

Pax,

-Paul Hart Cochran