Legalism Example

May 20th, 2008 Posted in General

Recently at my place of employment, the main women’s restroom was being redone. This left just a single toilet for all the women in the whole building. This created a long line to the women’s toilet. This created lots of loud talking and laughter. This created one small problem.

Some of the commotion was interfering with some important recorded phone calls at a nearby cubicle, so the next day an email was sent from management asking everyone to keep the volume level of their talking down while waiting for the restroom. As the line formed outside the restroom all was pleasant and some quiet chattering was taking place in the line. Suddenly, a female employee walked by and said “SHHHH! There’s no talking by the restrooms!”. She was very serious. She made one young lady rather nervous, making her think she was doing something wrong.

The “Shushing” employee reminded me of the legalistic Pharisees I had been reading about in Matthew. I’m sure this lady thought at some level that she was helping the company and being a good employee. She invented her own “rules” around management’s “law” that there be no loud talking out side of the restroom. Management made a law that was meant to provide freedom:

Freedom for nearby employees to work uninterrupted by loud noises.
Freedom from potential law suits arising from angry clients feeling like they are not being taken seriously because of all the laughter going on.
Freedom for those to wait to still be able to have a conversation at a reasonable volume.

Then “Miss Shush” invented her own legalistic rule around the law, which just restricted freedoms that had no need to be restricted. All it did was create unnecessary fear and anger among other employees. The Pharisees did similar things when they made up their own rules and traditions around God’s law. In reading the Gospels, we can see that Jesus is constantly rebuking the Pharisees for weighing people down with their man-made traditions and rules that they use to condemn others and lift themselves up.

One Response to “Legalism Example”
By Bridget on Jun 3, 2008

Ben,
I am enjoying reading your study of Matthew and I especially like your commentary and insights into the passages. Your example of legalistic behavior was helpful to me as I try to enforce the “rules” with the girls. I don’t want to be too legalistic. Hard to find the balance sometimes….

Salvation Is Jesus