One time there was a man who did not like the legalistic and fussy way many Christians approached their lives. They always had scruples about everything. There was always a problem with something.
And although he had a point, I am afraid he over-reacted, and he began to do things just to get a reaction from people. He was a decent sort, and of course he didn’t want to break any of God’s commandments explicitly, and so he would just concentrate on offending pietistic sensibilities. He did this, thinking that he was advancing the cause of true Christian liberty. He would watch movies that were questionable, and then make a point about telling people all about it. He would have two glasses of wine when some members of his family were not at all sure it was okay to have any. He would smoke cigars like he was a chimney. Whenever anybody tried to talk to him about it, he was always sure that they were doing so in order to preserve and protect their legalisms, and not because they saw that something was “off” in his life.
One year, the company he worked for had a big Christmas party and, caught up in the spirit of the thing, he had more to drink than he usually did, and to speak honestly, he was usually on the edge. It was unfortunate, because in that condition he struck up a conversation with his boss’s boss, and in a hearty, bluff manner, which he thought worldly and sophisticated, insulted him in quite remarkable ways. He found out about all this the following Monday in a painful interview with his boss, in which he discovered that any hopes of a promotion that he might have been entertaining were gone for the time being. And he couldn’t accuse his superior of legalism, because he was actually a rank pagan.
He was very discouraged, and sought out some advice from an old friend—one who had tried to warn him about his drinking more than once. He tried to explain that the whole thing was so unfair. But his friend told him plainly, and this time he actually started to get through. “You have trained yourself to hear any warning to be careful as though it were a legalistic ban. But when the Bible says to be careful with wine it means that we need to be careful with wine. And the fact that some Christians are too careful doesn’t mean that you are given a free pass to be careless.”