It's Just Easier

There is a truth that it has taken me many years to believe. I still struggle with it, in fact, because I have a skewed definition of the word "easy". The truth is that it is easier to explain your Convictions than your Exceptions. Let me give some back story as an example.

A couple summers ago my wife and I opened our house to the young man leading worship at our church. I wanted him to continue leading over the summer, and he needed housing. We worked out a deal in which he ate all my food and lived in my house and kept me up talking about all the things young people talk about much too late at night. (It was a wonderful summer actually, but my memory tends to block out all those good times as the years roll by). We have a rule about being alone in the house with a member of the opposite gender who is NOT your spouse. That means no females here with me and no males here with Leslie. Generally that is not a big issue... but when you have a young man living in your FROG it becomes slightly more applicable and difficult. There were numerous times that we had to adjust schedules to work it so that either he was not home or Leslie was not home or neither of them were home until I got home.

Just a few nights ago this same young man stopped by to pick something up from me, but I had not quite made it home from work. So, he stayed in his car until I got home. We have known him now for over 18 months, and he is more adopted-son than "college guy living in our house". In fact, I would have no real problem knowing that he was in my house for 15 minutes before I got home talking with my wife. But, that would be an Exception to a Rule that we live by. And, if we make that Exception then we open the door to new ones. Instead of a simple rule "No people of the opposite gender in the house when you are alone", we now have some complex rule of, "No people of the opposite sex that you have not known for a long enough time and have both agreed upon and that are only staying for a short amount of time when you are alone."

In the end we realize that it really is easier just to say, "Hey, will you wait in the car for a few minutes" than to try to create some all-flexible rule system that never creates any controversy and never steps on any toes.

That is going to be true of the most important Convictions in your life. People say that living by your convictions is hard. I suppose it depends on how you define hard. It is not hard to explain such a life. It is not hard to reap the benefits of such a life. It can be hard to answer the questions that such a life will provoke from friends and family. But, it is immensely harder to try to live a life in which you are continuously making exceptions to your convictions. Because, then you begin to realize that your convictions are not really all that convincing after all.