Bruce Charlton has an interesting post up on the “What can I get away with?” approach to reading scripture.

When Liberal ‘Christians’ interpret the Bible for guidance concerning modern sexual doctrine, and this criticism includes some of the most learned and eminent among modern scholars, they approach it looking for ‘legal loopholes’ which could be argued to allow what secular Left want to do anyway.

This applies to the two major recent issues that have riven the major denominations of ordination of women as priestesses within Christian Churches, and the extension of the post-sixties sexual revolution within Christianity.

Scripture is not the Code of Federal Regulations.  Christ is not God’s Undersecretary for Morals and Feeling Good About Yourself.  He is the Way.

One of the great parables that the modern prophets teach is the parable of the stage coach drivers.  Anyone who has years listening to Conference under their belt has heard it many times.  A man is hiring stage coach drivers and wants to know how close they can get to the edge on mountainside roads.  One applicant boasts ‘two feet, easy,’ the next one ‘two inches,’ then ‘right on the edge’ and even ‘half the wheel sticking over the edge, no problem, man.’  But the one who gets the job is the one who frowns and says he doesn’t know, because he always tries to avoid the edge.  The point is that the purpose of a stagecoach isn’t to get close to (or, alternately, stay far from) the edge.  The point is getting to the destination.

The temptation to be as minimally Christian as one can get away with is universal.  It exists today in young men who think that sinning now and repenting pre-mission is a nice little exploit.  It existed thousands of years ago in (probably) meso-America.  It is always a trap, Amulek pointed out.

33 And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.

 34 Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world

What we do is who we are.