Recovering Pharisee Confession #2

A Bad Interpretation

I remember at a very early age being told (by other Pharisees, of course) that the Bible commands us to abstain from even the appearance of evil. If it is even possible that someone watching me might mistakenly interpret something I'm doing as evil, I should not do it. This is why we weren't allowed to go to movie theaters. The church we belonged to used this reasoning:

If you're going into a Movie 6 cinema, even to see a G rated movie, but on the other screens were playing a couple of R rated movies, and someone from church or a co-worker happened to see you walking into the theater, they wouldn't know if you were going to see the G movie or the R movie, and so you wouldn't be abstaining from the appearance of evil.

I'm not joking.

Now, my family knew the absurdity of this particular example well enough, but the principle stuck with me until just recently. This argument got applied to anything and everything. Let's apply the principle to Jesus Himself, shall we?

Jesus' first miracle was to turn water into wine at a wedding celebration. Jesus ate and drank with His disciples, and it would have included wine. Apparently, this was not "abstaining from even the appearance of evil," since Jesus noted in Matthew 11:19 that people accused Him of being a drunkard. Looks like Jesus himself didn't do a very good job of avoiding what others might interpret as sin.

The root of this problem is a bad interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22, which says in a more modern translation (ESV):

16Rejoice always, 17pray without ceasing, 18give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19Do not quench the Spirit. 20Do not despise prophecies, 21but test everything; hold fast what is good. 22Abstain from every form of evil.

Of course, the old KJV said "appearance," which led to this whole misguided concept. There was nothing particularly wrong with that word being used; it was the way it was being read that caused the mistake. The verse, properly understood, would mean something to the effect of "every time evil appears (shows up), abstain from it." Furthermore, the context is the judging of prophecies. The idea applied to our current church situation would be this:

"Don't hate preaching, but always test the preaching. If it's good, hold onto it. If it's bad, avoid it."

You see then how much different that is from "avoiding doing anything that someone oddball from your workplace or Pharisee from our church might wrongly interpret as sin."