In Luke 10:29 Jesus talks about love for neighbor and the dude wants to have a theological debate about what constitutes his neighbor. He’s not looking for reasons to obey, he wants to “justify himself” and he’s going to make himself feel better by hiding behind a theological argument about what constitutes a neighbor. We do the same.

I doubt you’ll ever find this in a “how-to” guide for doing youth ministry, but it’s worked pretty well for me for over a decade. I have two rules. I announce the two rules at every single event and refer back to them often. Here are my two rules. 1. No making out. 2. Don’t be an idiot.

I do this because I know the way we tend to respond to rules—especially a long and detailed list of rules. The more detailed the rule the more inclined we are to try to find exceptions. It’s our human nature to see how close the line of disobedience we can get. We look for loopholes. We try to be the exception. We put more energy into figuring out how to get around a command instead of actually obeying it*.

My intention here isn’t to discuss the merits of my two rules, but rather to introduce my main point; namely, our tendency to use philosophical reasoning to keep ourselves from very simple obedience.

You see this in the guy in Luke 10:29. Jesus talks about love for neighbor and the dude wants to have a theological debate about what constitutes his neighbor. He’s not looking for reasons to obey, he wants to “justify himself” and he’s going to make himself feel better by hiding behind a theological argument about what constitutes a neighbor. We do the same. I appreciate these words from Tony Merida:

Jesus wanted him to embrace his neighbor. Christ’s message in the parable serves as a warning that we must avoid following the pharisaical pattern of talking philosophically about topics like kindness and giving and sharing without practically applying what we say we believe about them. Frankly, we sometimes like to make things more complicated than they are not because we lack understanding but because we don’t want to obey. Our talk is often a smoke screen for our lack of willingness to do what we know we can and should do. So let’s pause and ask God to make us a generous people. (Merida, Acts, 70)

Read More