Morality and a Dirty Shirt

"Some people think it is not proper for a clergyman to dance. I mean to assert my freedom from any such law. If our Lord chose to represent, in His parable of the Prodigal Son, the joy in Heaven over a repentant sinner by the figure of ‘music and dancing,’ I will hearken to Him rather than to men, be they as good as they may. For I had long thought that the way to make indifferent things bad, was for good people not to do them.” —George MacDonald, Annals of Quiet Neighborhood

When I was growing up I had a friend whose mother, if asked, “Is this shirt dirty?” would always reply: “If it’s doubtful, it’s dirty.” That may be a passable theory of grooming, but as a moral premise, it’s deadly.

The “Dirty if Doubtful” moral thesis rests on this proposition: “Everything is bad unless I know it is good,” a hypothesis that breeds paranoia, guilt and hypocrisy for, “if you tell a man that honest pleasure is a sin in God’s sight, he will find a way to get illicit pleasure and yet keep the name for godliness” (Thomas Buchan, Witch Wood).

Furthermore it promotes legalism because “doubtful things” inevitably become rules and regulations that go beyond scriptural proscriptions and acquire the force and finality of sanctions nowhere found in the Bible (Colossians 2:23, 24).

The biblical theory of morality is the other way around: “Everything is good unless I know it is bad.”  Paul put it plainly, “Everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated (put to its intended use) by the word of God and prayer (1 Timothy 4:4,5).

Satan never created anything. Not even sin. Evil does not exist as a thing in itself; it is parasitic. It fastens itself to anything beautiful that God has made and twists it into a base and ugly thing through improper use, motive or timing. No, God has given us “all things richly to enjoy.” The world is ours, and everything in it.

Good can become evil in the devil’s hands and his devices are duplicitous—he can make evil look exquisitely good. Thus we need guidelines. The New Testament (the teachings of Jesus and his Apostles) is our authority in all matters of conduct, the answer to the question of the good life. Jesus and his Apostles drew very few lines but they drew them with fine precision. What is prohibited is clearly prohibited.

But, what is not prohibited is permissible. In other words: a thing is good unless I know from scripture it is bad.

Admittedly, a permissible thing may not be prescribed for me. I may, for various reasons, decide to lay a perfectly good thing aside. But the thing in and of its self is not wrong, nor is it necessarily wrong for others. To insist that it is, is to hearken to men, be they “as good as they may,” rather than to God (Matthew15:1-9)

David Roper

4.9.18