I had a massively disturbing flashback recently.  It was vivid, long-lasting, and it left me weak and sweaty.  My past does not involve drug abuse or battlefield experience, so the flashback was not related to those things.  However, I was heavily involved in – and even addicted to – a behavioral pattern that was about as unhealthy as drug abuse and as risky as the battlefield: legalism. I read a story last week that so wreaked of legalism that it sent me into a uncontrollable, spasmodic, legalistic flashback.

The story came across the AP wire last Friday and was titled: Ohio Christian School Tells Student to Skip Prom. The first line of the story was all I really needed to read in order to be ushered into a vivid flashback of my legalistic upbringing.  It read:

A student at a fundamentalist Baptist school that forbids dancing, rock music, hand-holding and kissing will be suspended if he takes his girlfriend to her public high school prom, his principal said.

As a young boy, I was raised in a Christian culture that forbade dancing, drinking, smoking, rock music, and saying “geez” because it sounded a lot like “Jesus.”  As a matter of fact, I was told repeatedly by Christian leaders in my church who used scare-tactics that taking one sip of alcohol made one “medically” drunk, and therefore all alcoholic drinking is sin.

I went to a Christian camp as a 12-year-old that had a line down the middle of the property separating the girls from the boys.  On the last night, we all had to put on jeans and long sleeve shirts in order to participate in the coed pool water games.  It was miserable trying to swim being loaded down with 50-pounds of wet denim and flannel.  The evening’s festivities were cut short after some legalistically rebellious kid decided to make a fecal deposit in the pool.  Privately, I heralded him as a hero while outwardly displaying my legalistic disapproval of such a mortifying sin.

I never once went to a dance during the six years of my junior and senior high career, because I was told – and believed – that dancing was of the devil and dances were subtle worship services of Satan.  Instead, my church offered “dance alternatives” where a bunch of culturally afraid Christian kids huddled together in someone’s basement for board games, Christian music, sexual tension, judgment of those who were at the dance, and Doritos.

When junior/senior prom came around, my church offered “dance alternatives on steroids” called “prom alternative.”  We would all dress up in tuxedos and “prom” dresses and spend an evening eating dinner on a boat on the Ohio River or going to a dinner theater.  There would be plenty of adult supervision to assure that the teens attending were not only enjoying an alternative to prom…but also experiencing an alternative to the sinful after-prom practices as well.

And then I went to college where I had to sign a statement agreeing not to dance, drink, smoke, or (the most sinful practice of all) smuggle a VCR into my room.  Better to forbid everything than to teach young Christian adults moderation and discernment, which leads me back to the story that induced my vicious legalistic flashback.

The high school student in question did in fact sign a document saying that he would not dance, listen to rock music, hold hands, or kiss a girl, so he does have an obligation to be a man of his word.  However, I think the school needs to rethink its admittance requirements.  How are we helping young men and women learn to exercise moderation and use discernment when we forbid them to be involved in activities that are amoral like a prom dance?

Do immoral things happen at or after prom?  Yes.  But teens should be taught by their Christian parents, Christian schools, and churches to behave themselves and act like Christ’s representatives in these types of scenarios rather than avoid them altogether.

Avoidance produces fear and judgment rather than moderation and discernment.  I should know.  The biggest weight I’ve had to shed (other than my wet jeans and flannel shirt) has been a mindset of fear and judgment produced by my legalistic upbringing.  It’s been an incredibly hard mindset to overcome, and it’s done a fair amount of relational damage in my life.

The flashback was real, and it wasn’t very pleasant.  A fellow legalistically trained youth group member from my past who is also trying to recover sent me the article.  I sent him a scathing reply and we laughed.  But deep down inside, I still feel conflicted, sad, and sorry for the damage we Christians inflict on one another in the name of legalism.