Ramped up refrigerator issue

When life was simple, here was the moral question: As adult children visiting our parents at the old homestead where we grew up, is it OK for us to march straight from the front door to the refrigerator and open it and help ourselves to a drink and a sandwich?

I can imagine the arguments on both sides. One side says, “Sure, it’s my parents’ house!” (Translation: “It’s still my house too.”) The other side says: “Nope, that’s rude. I no longer live there, so the courteous thing to do, even toward my own mom and dad, is to ask if I may have something to eat and drink.”

Would that the stakes were still as simple as a Coke and a ham and Swiss on rye.

I was sitting around with a few friends of mine, all parents of adult children who have strayed from God and drunk the Kool-Aid of their generation, and here was the new question: Is it OK to allow your adult children to stay overnight in your home with their boyfriends/girlfriends and share the same bedroom?

If you answered, “Absolutely not!” let me ratchet up the question a few notches. What if your son and his girlfriend have been living together for five years in an apartment and sharing the bills and a life together? Still not moved? What if your son and his girlfriend have been living together for five years in their own apartment and have a child of their own? Do you still tell them to find a motel when they’re in town because they may not violate God’s law by staying under your roof without the benefit of a marriage certificate?

Unfortunately, Scripture is not a book of casuistry, pronouncing judgments on moral problems by the application of theoretical rules to an exhaustive set of situations. You will not find a chapter in the Bible that will speak to the particulars of your parental issue. You will not find an index of topics at the back of it that will bring you directly to the page and verse number that has your answer.

Or maybe we should reverse that and say: Fortunately, Scripture is not a book of casuistry, pronouncing judgments on moral problems by the application of theoretical rules to an exhaustive set of particular situations. Could it be that it is by divine design (evidently it is) that we are not handed facile answers that require no wrestling on our part? For if we were handed the answer sheet, where would be the searching of God’s Word for instruction? Where would be the “asking, seeking, and knocking”? Where would be the soliciting of the wisdom of the brethren?

And when we have searched all, and sought all, and prayed with all, we make a decision one way or another. And the Spirit has something to say about that decision-making process of believers that is deeper and more challenging than first appears and that requires all our heart and mind and soul:

“… Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5, ESV).

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