Who Can Measure Our Walk With Christ?

No one! It's impossible to measure how religious someone is but we human beings love to try. We just love measuring stuff! So from the beginning of time since we can't measure other people hearts or their commitment to God, we begin using outside benchmarks. We decided that you weren't a real Christian if you danced, smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol or got tattoos.

While growing up in a "Black Baptist and Pentecostal Church" during my early years. We had many families in our church who actually believe going to the movies would send you to straight to hell, especially if Jesus returned while you were in a theater. I really believe that's why we have many Christian schools with dress codes, curfews, and required rules - all in an effort to measure how much religion one has . Even now, some Christian organizations are prepared to fight to the death to keep certain hair styles , baggy jeans, or certain kinda of music outside their doors.

Don't get me wrong sometimes the intentions are good. No one will dispute that cigarettes will kill you, or excessive alcohol consumption can destroy your family and your life. But those are health rules, not spiritual rules. In fact, some would argue that at the beginning of this century, the church began to lose it's credibility in the culture because it joined the "Temperance" bandwagon. Many wondered why the church became such a force for eliminating alcohol from society - especially since it isn't even a Biblical issue. Once they saw pastors cross that credibility line, they lost respect for the church and it still hasn't recovered.

You can't really be a Christian if you don't believe in Jesus Christ Death, Burial and Resurrection. I will go a little farther and say you can't be a Christian if you deny all authority of Scripture (since that's really the only place we can really learn about the teachings of Jesus). I will state for the record you can drink, smoke, do drugs, play cards, dance, and even *gasp*be gay and still be a Christian ( I am a once saved always saved person).

The point that I am trying to make is, we should be careful in our attempts to measure someone's spirituality by the way they dress, what they drink, or who they associate with. The apostle Paul was pretty clear about that in his letters, but we human beings just can't seem to lose our obsession with being able to "measure" other people's commitment to God.