Do the moral laws of Christianity stifle us? OR Is God a cosmic killjoy?


                This is meant to be a follow up to my last post, which discusses freedom under Christ. Now I want to flip the discussion. Do the moral laws that God passed down to us that Jews and Christians follow stifle our lives? Is God a cosmic killjoy? As a Christian, my obvious answer is no, and I would like to take this post and try to explain why.
                There are plenty of people that will object to Christians as prudes for not “having fun” in general, and they will probably have some examples in mind, even “progressive Christians”. A lot of people will mock Christians for not partaking in all of what today’s society has to offer, in drinking, sexual promiscuity, moral relativity, and so on. The problem is that they have this idea of a God who loves us and wants to be our friend by letting us do what we want. This view has been created by Satan, distorting the message that God loves us into something that makes people think that God is subservient to our will. God does indeed love us, but He is our Lord, Creator, and Parent. God has given us our moral laws so that we would be able to protect ourselves from harm and abuse, much like a parent keeping us from sticking our fingers in the socket.
                Well that’s all well and good, but how do we see that God isn’t just an abusive parent hiding behind a façade of loving us? Well we have Jesus telling us that he was sent that we as humans would have life, and live it to the full (John 10:10). We have God professing his love for us, and throughout the Old Testament we see the nation of Israel prospering when they are following the commandments of God, and the nation suffering when they would willfully ignore them.
                However, there is a very large part of all of scripture and the gospel that people are ignoring. Yes, God has set up rules for us to follow, and He has disciplined us when we stray from those rules. We entered into the covenants with God, and He was justified in disciplining us when we strayed. However, God wasn’t content to leave the relationship with humanity as it was. God decided to give of Himself, His very own Son, to come down to earth to minister to us, and to be crucified as the perfect sacrifice as payment for humanity’s transgressions. Through this, we could once again have fellowship with God and come before him blameless, if all we would do is accept this gift of salvation that Jesus so graciously offered us. Does that sound like a God that is a killjoy?

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