Contextualizing the Law
Matt Kennedy

The diocese of Newark recently passed two resolutions with regard to the Windsor Report and human sexuality. In these resolutions the diocese makes the popular distinction between doctrine and discipline. Doctrine is unchanging and eternal, they admit, but discipline is to be applied contextually.

To some extent this is true. Take the Lord’s command against lust for example. The teaching is, “do not lust.” Do not reduce a fellow human being to a mere object of sexual desire. Thus, we are obliged as believers to keep away from those situations that might evoke lust. However those situations differ according to context. A teenage boy from Kansas probably should not go to a beach where women trot about topless. At the same time, a teenage boy who grew up in a part of the world where women never wear tops might go to the same beach and have no problem. So following Jesus’ command in one part of the world, one context, can look different than it does in another (I remember reading a very similar illustration of this in CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity)
Notice that in both contexts the desire and aim is to maintain adherence and obedience to the command against lust. Both young men obey the letter and the spirit of the command.

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