{"id":61,"date":"2004-11-07T15:53:23","date_gmt":"2004-11-07T23:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=44"},"modified":"2004-11-07T15:53:23","modified_gmt":"2004-11-07T23:53:23","slug":"defining-by-negative-example","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2004\/11\/07\/defining-by-negative-example\/","title":{"rendered":"Defining by Negative Example"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time I was a fundamentalist. I didn’t know it then — I was only a teenager. I had never traveled, never known many other Christians outside my own tradition. My spirituality was defined largely by things I didn’t<\/em> do: “don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t go with girls who do.”<\/p>\n

Then I went away to college. Thankfully, it was a wonderful institution with a broad Evangelical tradition. I had friends and teachers who challenged me to think beyond my “negative example” spirituality.<\/p>\n

I moved back home, and over the course of many years (too many now to think about), became a leader in the church in which I had grown up. The church had changed in many ways, but still retained some of its fundamentalist roots. And I began to define my spirituality by attitudes I don’t<\/em> hold — don’t insist on non-essential doctrinal points, don’t focus on cultural externals (drink and dance!), don’t withdraw from the culture. I defined myself as not<\/em> a fundamentalist. I started to feel pretty good about how wise and broad-minded I’d grown.<\/p>\n

Yet I’m wondering if I’ve grown that much at all. I still seem to define my spirituality by what I’m not<\/em>. How much harder it is to be defined by something I am<\/em> — to be defined by love, joy, peace, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, self-control. Maybe there’s room for yet another chapter in this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time I was a fundamentalist. I didn’t know it then — I was only a teenager. I had never traveled, never known many other Christians outside my own tradition. My spirituality was defined largely by things I didn’t do: “don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t go with girls who do.” Then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-Z","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}