Damaging Legalistic Religion – Jim Fowler

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Many have had experiences in rule-based, legalistic religion that casts everything into arbitrary right or wrong categories. Such believe-right, do-right religion can leave a person with a damaged psyche of perfectionist moralism that affects their personality and operational perspectives. The authoritative and judgmental orientation of such religion often leaves a person with an elitist attitude of thinking they know everything and everyone else should conform to what they believe. They judgmentally view and accept others based on their conformity to their belief-system.

The entire system of legalistic religion orients people to themselves. The focus is on YOU. How well are YOU doing in keeping the rules and believing the right teaching? This fosters a self-centered narcissistic orientation of comparative performance leading to self-authority and self-righteousness. For me, this led to being excessively strict in my approach to child rearing and overly critical of other’s thought and behavior. For others, their self-focus is on their failure and wrongdoing, leaving them with a sense of inadequacy and inability to meet the expectations of others, a diminished and negative self-evaluation.

Does such legalistic religion lead to a positive moralistic social behavior? No, usually rebellion sets in, and the imposed limitations give way to experimentation in prohibited behaviors that break the imposed rules. This proceeds to the hypocrisy of play-acting while suffering an underlying insecurity of guilt for alleged violation of expectations, and shame for not measuring up to prescribed behaviors. While maintaining a narrow-minded distrust of authority and prescribed behavior, many simply “burn out” on religion altogether to pursue their self-determined thoughts and actions. We can only overcome the damage of legalistic religion when the GRACE of God in Jesus Christ takes away our self-focus to focus on Jesus Christ and His sufficiency in our lives.

Jim Fowler is a cherished and respected friend of Plain Truth Ministries, a wonderful brother in Christ, having served in a variety of capacities, on our Board of Directors, as a theological consultant and as an author and editor.  He continues to write, with his latest being “Manifesting the Life of Jesus” available on Amazon.  Jim is a treasure to the body of Christ, a Christ follower who faithfully reflects God’s grace in Jesus, as our risen Lord lives his life within him.