FAQs on non-negotiables and obedience

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1. Don't non-negotiables mean bigotry? Isn't it better to be open-minded? 

 

One of the great myths of our century is that tolerant people have no absolute rules. They absolutely do. For example, "Thou shalt not tolerate racism," or, "Thou shalt not allow a wealthy, powerful man to extort sexual favors from staff members."

 

People who consider themselves "tolerant" are not open-minded about these issues. They treat their views as non-negotiable, absolute, universal. No excuses of personal background. No cultures where those behaviors and ideas might be OK. Always and everywhere, they are unacceptable. Passing judgment on them and harshly enforcing your judgment makes you an exemplary person, not a judgmental one. Thus say the tolerant people.

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Are the tolerant people bigots then? Of course not. But they do have non-negotiables, which means that it is possible to have non-negotiables without being a bigot. They do it all the time.

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2. If we emphasize obedience and give God total control of our lives, doesn't that kill human freedom?

 

There is a paradox here. The more we are under the control of King Jesus, the freer we get. His control is liberating. We can try to get out of his control, but that isn't "freedom." In the "5G" sequence about freedom, this paradox is the key thing we have to grasp. See examples there about skiers, football players, and astronauts as illustrations of it.

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3. If we treat things in the Bible as non-negotiable, won't we be hopelessly behind the times? What about all the changes between then and now? 

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Archeologists have not yet proved or disproved the theory that the cave man's club was actually invented by a cave woman whose husband cheated on her. Seeing its effects, male friends of the victim later adapted it for hunting. 

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Hunting weapons change, as does all technology. Humans not so much. The biblical non-negotiables deal with the human unchangeables.

 

In fact, the non-negotiables may well turn out to be the wave of the future, exactly what we need to prevent destructive abuse of our new technological capacity. The jaw-dropping advances in technology are neutral in themselves, but that means their potential for harm is equal to their potential for good. If we ask, "Which person or group would want to use these advances to harm others, and how could we prevent or limit that?" we are right back in the middle of the biblical non-negotiables.

 

4. How do we know which things in the Bible rise to the level of non-negotiables? Is everything non-negotiable?

 

Very good question, and people divide sharply over how to answer it. The entire history of Christian creeds illustrates that. Without saying the SYNC approach is the best one, let us put it forward for consideration alongside whatever other views may already be familiar to you.

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SYNC answers this question with the seven versions of they "Who Are We?" (W.A.W.) story. Non-negotiables are the things that make the story go the way it goes. For example, in all seven versions of the story, the whole story falls apart if Jesus is not the center of it. His centrality is non-negotiable. Or again, if people do not trust God enough to obey him even when he hasn't given them a full explanation, the story loses one of its main points. It becomes a different story. 

 

Of course, this is not a precise answer to the question, but that is intentional. The emphasis in SYNC is not on pinpointing how many non-negotiables there are in the Bible. It is on SYNCing with the God of the Bible as we know him through the panoramic story of the Bible (the "W.A.W. story") and through the nudges of his Spirit today. We just keep obeying whichever non-negotiables God highlights for us at any particular time. That is plenty to keep us busy without figuring out all the theory behind everything.