"Idolatry........................."

Nearly thirty years ago my wife and I were part of a volunteer staff that birthed a church school, a one-on-one program with individual work stations, small at the time, but today occupying its own building, operating with salaried employees, and with an enrollment, annually, of more than two hundred kids. Saturday, late afternoon, we drove out to the gymnasium to celebrate the recent graduation of one family’s youngest son and, while we were there, some good-natured banter was tossed around concerning two of the boy’s classmates who arrived with newly-acquired tattoos. Three decades ago such “sin” would have been sufficient reason for immediate expulsion, no debate, no apologies, no grace at all about the matter, our roots being in “old-time holiness”. Nowadays they still run “a tight ship”, but realize, as well, that the world has changed around us. As I told someone once, the Old Testament indeed forbid any desecration of our bodies; then, again, in the New Testament women are told not to cut their hair and to ask their husbands at home if they have any questions regarding ecclesiastical policies! Somewhere in this, we have to consider culture, environmentally and calendar-specific as it evolves. God never changes; men, however, remain men, carving out mental images of deity as they go and seldom aware that more is accomplished when the procedure is reversed……