1. Realize that recognition is critical. If you don't know what legalism is, it is difficult to deal with it. Churches and individuals may be "grace-based" in some areas and legalistic in other areas. Having rules, in and of itself, does not constitute legalism. That said, it's very easy for legalists to make legalism sound like legitimate rule-making. The ability to distinguish between what is legal and what is legalistic is crucial to the recognition of legalism.

2. Understand that guilt and shame go hand in hand with legalism. There is legitimate guilt about sin, but with legalism, guilt and shame are tools, rather than consequences. The power to enforce legalistic rules is based on false guilt. Legalists use shame to prevent people from ever feeling like they are "good enough." Legalists use shame to withhold approval and keep people coming back for more and more rules to live by in order to receive the approval they crave.

3. Watch for Legalism's focus on doctrine instead of people. While doctrine is important, God's main concern is about people. No one will ever completely understand God, and yet God still accepts us. Legalistic preaching focuses on pet doctrinal issues and practices--such as how other groups are in error.

4. Realize that within a legalistic system, emotional needs take a back seat to intellectual pursuits. While we can't always trust our emotions, it is also true that we can't always trust our intellects. The legalist assumes that reasoning abilities are sufficient to come up with exactly how God is going to be pleased with us. Legalism plows over emotional needs in favor of looking good on the outside, even if people are emotionally dying on the inside.

5. Understand that legalists avoid relative truth or "gray areas" or the importance of personal convictions. With a strong concern for the dangers of relativism, legalists over-emphasize absolute truth so that all standards become absolute. They fail to cognitively recognize the contextual aspects of many rules, even those they themselves contextualize.

Gamaliel's Desk

I just finished reading Mark Galli's new book, Jesus Mean and Wild, and I think he's off to a good start. Unfortunately, like most modern writers, he does not go quite far enough, and certainly not as far as I have gone in exploring the real mean and wild Jesus. I have grown weary of the namby-pamby approach to ministry so often espoused by those self-esteem gurus of laissez faire, anything goes Christianity like John McArthur, John Piper, and D. James Kennedy. Mark Galli has finally found the Jesus of the Gospels that these maudlin ministers of meek and mild have missed all these years.

Jesus Mean and Wild tells of a Jesus who is much like myself. Eschewing any pretense of being nice, I seek instead to administer loving rebuke to those in need. The loving thing to do to a child about to touch a hot stove is to shout out a warning. And that is the focus of my ministry – shouting out timely warnings to those who are about to be burned by sin. And when the shouted warning doesn't work, just like Jesus wielded the whip in the temple, I bring out the heavy hardware to keep people from turning God's house of worship into a pagan bacchanal like they do in those "praise and worship" services at most contemporary services. It is my duty to loving drive out all of the insidious influences that infect the innocent purity of our devotions including contemporary music, lewd clothing and tattoos.

 

We would like to extend our deepest condolences to the Amish families who have lost loved ones in the recent school shooting.

With the Amish response to this shooting, news commentators remarked on the great faith, the quick forgiveness and the unencumbered, secluded lifestyle of the Amish. Unfortunately, the stoic legalism among the Amish has a dark side. Their forgiveness extends quickly outward for horrendous crimes while at the same time is withheld from those within their own groups for breaking petty extra-biblical rules. While we do not wish to vilify the Amish, the required forgiveness of gross wrongs in some Amish groups can leave their children vulnerable to more than shootings. Chris Burkholder, formerly Amish, shares his story in Amish Confidential. Read ill-legalism's review.