This sometimes seems to have been lost on certain self-appointed guardians of evangelical morality. These are the people who will tell you things not specifically prohibited in the Scriptures ought to be. Three examples might be the practices of smoking, drinking alcohol and dancing. Each of these activities is frowned upon by many conservative Christians. In fact the author attended a Christian College in the Eastern United States which prohibited all three activities. At the time I was a new believer coming out of a worldly lifestyle and thought the rules very appropriate for Christian higher education. It contrasted strongly with the secular Florida "party school" that I had previously attended and that was fine with me.

In the 9 years since graduation my point of view has slowly changed, partially from beginning to learn the difference between legalism and grace and partially from discerning the difference between license and Christian freedom. I make a conscious effort to no longer automatically judge a person’s spiritual depth based on whether they enjoy a glass of wine at dinner or the occasional cigar after it. Moreover If they then decide to dance the rest of the night away I will not assume they are the dreaded "Carnal Christians" (an oxymoron; or so we are told by fundamentalists) who we so often decide are sliding down the slippery slope.

It might surprise many evangelicals to know that a man who is very highly esteemed among us as a model believer, the late Christian author and apologist C.S. Lewis, was a pipe smoker. Then too there is Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation. He was a man who had no compunction about drinking a little good German beer and apparently more than a little on some occasions. As for dancing we can look to the Bible itself and the person therein described as the "man after God’s own heart", King David. In 2^nd Samuel 6:16 he returns from a victorious battle "leaping and dancing before the Lord".

Now this is not to say that any of these things are without spiritual or physical danger. While the Scripture does not mention anything about smoking specifically it definitely has much to say about taking care of our bodies, God’s temple on Earth. Alcoholic beverages are not condemned by the Word of God but drinking to get drunk certainly is. As for dancing, Christians need to discern between the legitimate expression of the art form and the overtly sexual "dirty dancing" that is so common today.

These, though, are often questions of moderation and self-control not prohibition. We serve a God whose "good pleasure" it is to give us the things of the Kingdom. Under Christ’s Lordship our minds, bodies and spirits are meant to fully enjoy the many good gifts He has given us while we sojourn in our temporal home on Earth. This is part of the abundant life that is the earthly inheritance of every believer and no arbitrary man-made law should stand in the way of God’s children receiving that inheritance.