Commandment 11: There Shalt Be Windows

At the end of a night of rabblerousing with the boys (back in my mid-teens), one of my friends put his hand on my shoulder and, shaking his head, whispered, “You know, if my grandparents knew what we did tonight... I’d be excommunicated and lose my inheritance.”

Come again? Did I miss something this evening? Was I complicit in a heroin-fueled homicide or bank robbery without my knowledge? I glanced at my hands—no blood. I reached into my pocket: $1.50 and some lint.

“Okay Craig, what was the crime? What on earth would warrant you losing your acre of the family farm?”

“Bowling,” he whispered, shaking his head again. “And drums.”

Alright, I’ve partaken in my share of ungodly activities, but if I had told my mother that I’d just be bowling and banging on drums every Friday night for the rest of my high school career, she’d sign up in a minute.

Truthfully, this particular friend and I have done plenty of crazy things over the years. There was the one time we sneaked onto the ski slope—at 2:00am—and proceeded to snowboard to the light of the moon. No concerns he’d forfeited his birthright that time. The night we took a swim in ten different strangers’ pools (again in the middle of the night; mischief works the 3rd shift): no fears of having to enter the foster system.

It was the bowling/ drums combination that had his mesh shorts in bunch. I had to know the reason for this madness. This was his explanation. The bowling alley had no windows. Okay, perfect logic so far. He said that once you entered, the outside world would no longer be able to see what you were doing. The inside people didn’t matter. It was the outside people you had to worry about. You could claim you were bowling, but without windows through which grandma and Joe Stranger can verify, you could just as well be having a satanic séance. The bowling alley was no different than a windowless adult book store to grandma. I realized later that this was why my friend never went to the movie theaters with us (unfortunately the local drive-in movie theater had been closed for several years at that point).

As for the drums. One of our other friends had a drum kit and this other friend and I would often jam on weekends (like only 16-year olds can jam). However, on this particular evening, something “possessed” Craig to pick up the drum sticks for the first time (he normally kept his distance). After a few cautious taps of the kick drum, he entered a trance and proceeded to pound the skins like an angry tribal medicine man for hours. He played in fifth gear all night—no trepidation and full perspiration. And he loved every minute of it. Until later when the guilt crept in.

I asked him what it was about the drums that made his grandparents want to purchase firearms. He said he honestly didn’t know. Perhaps it was the association with rock music, which—as we all know—is Satan’s preferred soundtrack (the devil doesn’t use watches or clocks to keep time, he uses blistering drumbeats).

I tried to reassure Craig by pointing out the obvious: “You were playing totally offbeat and out of sync most of the time... so you may be off the hook on a technicality”. He didn’t buy it. I promised to keep that evening a secret forever. Unless it were to become a humorous anecdote in a book someday— yeah, longshot.

That was my first conscious encounter with the spiritual disease we often call “legalism”— an excessive adherence to law or formula. In the Christian context, we’re typically talking about laws and formulas of the moral realm; however, legalism is a category-jumper, as we’ll see later.

I learned that my friend’s grandparents had a War and Peace of “do not’s” that included much more than drums and bowling and movie theaters. And each rule had an ever-growing set of sub-rules to eliminate the possibility of misinterpretation of the overarching rule. You needed to pass your bar exam to become a Christian in that family.

I believe that the rules placed on my friend Craig were not created to protect him against evil, but rather the “appearance” of evil. I’ll assume that Grandma didn’t think something as unremarkable as rolling a ball into some pins or banging sticks on some skins was inherently sinful. But performing these activities may lead to suspicions by those ignorant of the situation. The idea here is that a Christian’s life should be a perpetual Main Street window display in a manner that his or her actions can be confirmed righteous at all times by, even by the casual stranger walking her dog. This is how a person becomes above reproach. Or so they claim.

For the legalist, perception trumps reality. Who we are thought to be often means more than who we really are. The stranger often holds more sway as judge in the legalist’s court than God Himself. The problem with this ideology: I can be a regal mannequin in that perpetual Main Street display, wearing a conservative suit with a King James Bible in hand— and still be lusting in my heart at the short-skirted woman that just walked by. The façade is powerful and deceives not only the onlooker but, eventually, the wearer of that façade. When the wearer starts believe that they really are as righteous and noble as their persona conveys, they begin looking down at those who don’t quite have it together. Spiritual pride is often a catalyst in the production of legalism.

This condition is native to the human experience. The seeds of legalism spread wide and far and freely germinate in the soil of human depravity. The rhizomes of legalism are so tenacious that it flourishes as an exotic weed in the most alien of places— The State of Grace (too be continued...).