No Grey

If I step on some toes here, get a band aid and some tylenol. It’s going to hurt.

When I was growing up in Shawnee, Oklahoma, my Grandparents took me to church with them every Sunday without fail. Their lives revolved around the church and God and so learned to make that just important in my life as well.

Wesley United Methodist Church became my family and I became part of theirs. I still feel that way about the people there.

One person in the church who had a huge influence on me and my life was my Sunday School teacher through Jr. High and High School….Dale Gibson. Dale was tireless in his pursuit of God’s Word and always looking for ways to teach us about it. A lot of times, he would use Christian themed books to teach us.

I will always remember a phrase he used to describe Christians who compromised their beliefs and values to fit in to the world. Mugwumps.

Mugwump is also a political term used to describe someone who plays both sides. In Dale’s words, “he sits on the fence with his mug (face) on one side, and his wump (rear) on the other.

God says you are either all in or all out. There is no grey area.

Matt 6:24 says “No one can serve two masters. Eventually, you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and the world.”

I remember dating a girl while I was in high school who I really liked. She was beautiful. One of our first dates was to a youth lock-in that my church was having. To me, that was the place where I could have the most fun. But, she became bored quickly and asked me to take her to a friend’s house until it was time to go home. She wanted me to go too, but my desire was to be with my “family” at the church. As it turned out, she wanted to party and did. It was evident when I picked her up to take her home.

You see, I could have compromised my values just to be with her. A lot of times as Christians, we do exactly that. We are influenced by someone we really want to be with and conform to their way of life in order to make them like us or to keep us from losing what we think is love. We know that it’s wrong, but we ease into it until it doesn’t make us feel guilty anymore. We just don’t tell anyone and we hide it as well as we can. The problem is that we cannot hide anything from God.

And, eventually, as a Christian, it will eat you up inside.

If you feel like you need to compromise your values to please another person, you are conforming to something other than God. Stop and walk away. RIGHT NOW!