When Christians are inclined to follow a rigorous strategy toward God’s revelation, they often focus especially on prohibitions. As a result, they tend to err on the side of overly restricting behavior rather than on the side of permitting it.

Recall the illustration of the house, yard and wilderness. The house represents those things that are clearly commanded or permitted in Scripture. The wilderness represents those things that are clearly forbidden in Scripture. The yard represents those commands and prohibitions that, to one degree or another, are unclear to the reader.

Once again, suppose that we want to build a fence around those things that Scripture permits, so that we can define the boundaries of Christian morality. A strategy of rigor would tend to build the fence very close to the house. In this way, it would forbid most or all of what is unclear to avoid stumbling into immorality.

But there’s a problem with this rigorous practice. Many of the things in the yard that are outside the fence are actually permitted, or even commanded, in Scripture. When we respond to the Bible’s teaching in such restrictive ways, we often end up forbidding some things that God permits and other things that God actually commands.

The Bible teaches that Christians have certain freedoms of conscience. That is, there are some actions that may be good for some people and evil for others. The classic examples of this are in Paul’s discussions of food that had been sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 8, 10. Paul indicated that eating food that had been sacrificed to idols was acceptable for those with strong consciences, but sinful for those with weak consciences. Since matters of conscience are often unclear, a strategy of rigor would tend to prohibit everyone from eating this food in order to ensure that no one ever violated his conscience.

Sadly, the tendency to condemn whatever is not explicitly permitted tends to turn God’s Word into a long list of prohibitions. This tendency causes Christians to be so preoccupied with law-keeping that they begin to think of God as a harsh taskmaster rather than as a loving Father. Many even feel that God is greatly displeased with them when they fail to live up to their self-imposed rigorous standards. By destroying our Christian freedom and inspiring despair, a strategy of rigor both hinders our attempts to learn our duty and hampers our ability to take joy in the God of our salvation.

A good corrective is to realize that because modern situations are sufficiently different from biblical situations, we can’t simplistically mimic the applications we find in Scripture. We must always account for differences between our situations and those in the Bible. We can also avoid a strategy of rigor by remembering the clarity of Scripture. Scripture is always sufficiently clear to communicate God’s will with regard to Christian ethics. God gave his word to his people to bless them, not to oppress them. And there are many, many places in Scripture that state this idea.