Whilst I didn’t grow up in a faith filled home, I grew up in a home where good morals and behaviour were modelled. I say good, by that what I mean is they were the kind of morals that were respected and expected in my culture. They were the kind of behaviours that on the outside seem based on ‘Christian’ teaching but I knew that wasn’t directly the source in our home. Throughout my teenage years I mostly kept to those morals. I was far from perfect but I really didn’t push against the morals I had been taught.

When I came to faith at 17 I started hearing about Jesus and how as we follow Him our motivations and our behaviours would begin to change to look more like His. In many ways those outside behaviours weren’t that different to how I’d been living. I needed to clean up some language and in time stop clubbing in the way I did but because I’d been raised in this moral christian influenced culture it wasn’t hard for me to learn. That didn’t mean my inside didn’t need work and it wasn’t like I was perfect. I was sinning plenty, it’s just that the places I was sinning were either hidden from others or were ‘accepted‘ by others.

What do I mean by accepted? Is any sin acceptable?

No…… but maybe. I think in our western culture there are certain sins that we seem to just allow or excuse. Things like gossip, greed, dishonour etc. seem to be things that either masquerade in such a way that we can’t be sure how to detect them or because they are so common we have all grown to think they aren’t so bad. That means that even the common things that I did and do wrong I’m not really penalised for.

But let’s imagine I hadn’t grown up in the family I grew up in.

Let’s say I grew up in one where it was normal to sleep around, drink more heavily, recreationally use drugs etc. and throughout my teenage years I continually lived like this and those behaviours extended in certain ways. They were the kind of behaviours that on the outside seemed very far away from any ‘Christian’ teaching.

Then when I got to 17 I said yes to Jesus, the same as in my real life scenario. I start hearing about Jesus and how as we follow Him our motivations and our behaviours begin to change to look more like His. I realise that I have to radically alter my outside behaviours in order to look more like Jesus. My insides need work too. But it takes time because I have become so used to my outside behaviours and some of them are actually quite addictive. Because other Christians my age grew up differently and their sins are hidden or acceptable I realise I’m very different because my sins are very visible and seemingly very unacceptable.

Am I sinning any more than the in my real life story?

No, I don’t think so. Sin is sin. It’s a distortion of what God has called us to and our call as Christians is to move towards the more God has in store for us rather than live in our sinful state.

The problem is the process of gossiping less, while it can take time, seems much less offensive to the traditional christian mindset than if I was sleeping around less. We would give grace to one but would remain pretty strict on the other. This is true of the culture I am in. This means that those of us who grew up in certain backgrounds seem to be given an advantage when it comes to how we exercise our walk with Jesus within Christian culture. That doesn’t sound like the gospel to me.

How do we change this?

I honestly am not sure. I’m certainly not saying that we lower the bar of behaviour on the more visible and unacceptable sins to match what we do for the less visible and more acceptable. I think we probably need to raise the bar on the acceptable sins to match how seriously we treat the unacceptable.

However, we also need to live with grace and mercy with each. We must give consideration to the whole story of the person in question. I’m not saying we excuse behaviour and never challenge but we also must allow the Holy Spirit to do His job of discipling and ministering to each person. It’s going to be a complicated journey, fraught with lots of misunderstanding but I think it’s a journey worth taking.