Remember how I said that “many of these statements will be very easily identifiable as lies” ? Well, this one definitely fits, if for no other reason than 1 Samuel 16:7 (emphasis mine):

But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

If I may paraphrase Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the publican (tax collector):

The legalist stood and prayed thus with himself, “God, I thank Thee that I am not like other men — extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this sinner. My hair doesn’t toucheth my collar; I listen only to music that is at least 300, nay 400, years old; my wife hath never worn pantaloons.”

This, to certain people, is the definition of true spirituality. According to this belief, if one takes care of the externals, everything is fine. Odd, given the fact that most lists of sins (like this one by Paul) weigh heavily on heart issues. I recall, as a child, singing a song that equated “bad” externals with sin. One verse of this song (whose tune is still stuck in my head 30+ years later, but whose lyrics are incomplete now) said:

Oh, you’d better not go (Oh, you’d better not go)
To the movie show (To the movie show)
Oh, you’d better not go (Oh, you’d better not go)
To the movie show (To the movie show)
Oh, you’d better not go to the movie show
La-la-la-la-la-la-la *
All my sins are taken away
Praise the Lord

* Don’t remember this line. Sorry. Sorta.

The most offensive part of this song — to me, anyway, so I’ll admit subjectivity — is that the last line seems to be crow-barred into the song to lend a more King James air to the song.

The other verses of this song are very similar. And the underlying message is simple: God saves us from external (bad) things. The logical conclusion of this song is that if you are a Christian and you are growing up in a home that doesn’t allow those bad externals anyway (i.e. 99% of the kids who sang this song), then God didn’t really save you from much, if anything at all. By this interpretation, we weren’t “dead in [our] trespasses and sins”, we just had the sniffles. What a mockery of God’s grace this is!

Perhaps the most deadly problem with this is that there is never a “why” explained. Why, specifically, is this so deadly? I’m glad you asked.

From an early age, Steven is taught that his hair should never touch his collar or ears. Setting aside the fact that this “rule” was concocted at a time when long hair on a male actually did have significance, Steven struggles with this idea. Those who laid down the rule point to 1 Corinthians 11:14 as their proof-text, but he cannot understand the arbitrary nature that defines “long” as touching the ears or collar. And in fact, he discovers that God commanded anyone who would be a Nazarite (e.g. Samson) to not cut his hair at all. Something in his mind/heart tells Steven that short hair, so strictly defined, is all a bunch of baloney.

Mark Twain observed that even a stopped (analog) clock is right twice a day. And so it is true for those that lay down the rules that Steven must obey. The next day, those same people tell him that he ought to read his Bible and pray. What are the odds that, having discovered that the rule-makers are full of it, Steven is going to believe them on that one either? Years pass, and — having been inundated with rules that make no sense to him — Steven throws the baby out with the bath-water and abandons anything having to do with Christianity. And now, Steven is “two-fold more the child of hell” than the rule-makers are.

In short, extreme (or worse yet, sole) emphasis on externals produces either someone with a very low view of God (and subsequently, a way-too-high view of himself) or someone who has abandoned God altogether.

The former may attend church his entire life, while the latter cokes himself up before jumping off a roof at age 22. But they both have an identical impact in the kingdom of God.

None.