Articles
Coffee and Do Nots
I like my coffee sweet, almost to a syrup. I also add cream. These preferences do not please others. I am obliged by them to be traditional, and drink my coffee black, or not at all. I am stubborn, however, and continue to spoon in the sugar and cream in the very face of criticism. I am comfortable with this choice, and wonder, “Who made my critics the authority regarding the proper way to drink coffee with my donuts?
I need to pause here, however, and ask, also, “Am I my own authority, since I choose to prepare my coffee as I do?” Sweet and creamy? Or bitter and black? On this subject, it doesn’t matter. There is no standard.
However, there are other matters in which we can make mistakes by yielding to the insistent opinions of others. These deal with the way to live as a Christian. Several examples can be found in the Bible that show how some people attempt to intimidate others by imposing their spiritual views on them.
Jesus condemned the Pharisees for “traveling across sea and land to make a single proselyte,” and then “making him twice as much a child of hell as themselves” (Matthew 23:15).
Their contemporary generation criticized Jesus and John for their patterns of behavior. Jesus responded, “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn’” (Matthew 11:16 19).
The Apostle Paul had to deal with teachers imposing their Jewish traditions on Gentile converts, first on the subject of circumcision (Galatians 2:2-5), and also on credentials of apostleship (2 Corinthians 11:5-15).
What Christians must never forget is that there is a standard of religious truth. There is no particle of human teaching in it. It is all from God. The Christian must discern the standard reverently, and follow it implicitly.
The Apostle Paul declares, “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.......Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath .......Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations?” (Colossians 2:6 23).
