The Boy Scouts have gotten into a variety of controversies over the last few years as a result of the ongoing culture wars in our society and their efforts to avoid antagonizing either side of culture warriors and to retain some claim to being a Christian organization, efforts which have largely been a failure as the two sides have irreconcilable goals and moral belief systems. In light of these present problems over moral corruption as it is defined in God’s word according to His unchanging standards, it is tempting to assume that the Boy Scouts were a pillar of moral rectitude and understanding back in the past, but that was not the case. In fact, in my experience with the Boy Scouts, I found that the behavior of a particular troop was often based on the moral worldview of that particular area, and there are generally strengths and weaknesses in just about every area.

I grew up in rural Central Florida, an area close to a major den of sin and vice (Tampa) but an area that prides itself on its moral excellence and its Southern roots. As a child, I wanted to join the local boy scout troop at my elementary school. Despite the fact that I was (and am) a somewhat socially awkward person, I’ve always been drawn to belonging to larger groups, and had thought the boy scouts to be a good place to learn some practical skills, not the least of which was learning some appropriate social skills among peers. Unfortunately, the local boy scout troop was not particularly understanding of my own religious beliefs, which include an observance of the biblical seventh day Sabbath. Since the Southern Baptist beliefs of the area transferred those obligations to the heathen practices of the first day (or what the gnostics called the eighth day), there was an obvious cultural gap. The fact that the Southern Baptists would not do any scouting activities on the first day of the week and I was not able to do any on the seventh day of the week created a serious problem.

Ironcially enough, this was not the case everywhere. Back in the days of the Worldwide Church of God, there was apparently a WCG-specific boy scout troop in Pasadena (none, sadly, ever found its way to Lakeland, Florida, where I attended church, though I suspect I would not have been the most popular member of that troop given my treatment by my peers there). From my conversation with other scouts who were able to worship freely without any difficulty in their troops, I found that the West Coast troops had a less antagonistic attitude towards biblical religious practices than the supposedly more moral Southeastern states. This presents an irony that we need to understand and appreciate, as it relates greatly to our attitude towards culture wars in general, and perhaps explains in part why I tend to find myself an outsider and an alien wherever I go because my own particularly personal belief system tends not to find itself expressed in any particular society.

It is tempting to draw lines in the sand and consider those on the other side of that line to be enemies of ourselves and of God because of their real or supposed failings in one area. The Bible is a vastly more complicated and detailed document, though, than either its supposed adherents or enemies give it credit for, though. The same God that forbids all kinds of immoral behavior in places like Leviticus 18 also commands the observance of the seventh day Sabbath, respect for authority, and fairness and generosity in one’s business dealings (just weights and measures and an avoidance of fraud and expoitatin of employees and the poor and vulnerable in general and all of that). No society that I have ever seen has managed to avoid falling into one ditch or the other (or both, if one happens to be a libertarian or totalitarian). Therefore all human societies and institutions, because they are made up of fallen and flawed and imperfect human beings, are going to depart from the standard of divine perfection that we see in the Bible.

This presents us with a difficult choice, one that we all have to wrestle with ourselves, without any assurance that the lines we draw and what we tolerate are acceptable in the eyes of God, before whom we are all accountable. Since all people and institutions are flawed, we have to decide what weaknesses and shortcomings we can overlook or forgive, and which that are too much for us to take. Is a tolerance of sexual sin a bridge too far, or is a disrespect of God’s Sabbath day too much to bear? Can we overlook a desire to attain the freedom to exploit others and consider that praiseworthy and just, while condemning those who (if perhaps under false pretenses and for dishonest motives) desire to appear to redress social evils? Where we draw the line does not, in the end, say anything about the conduct or behavior of others. What we all do and say and think is subject to the standards and laws of God, but as none of us know the hearts of others (as much as we would want to), none of us is competent to stand as the judge of someone else, even if we all have the responsibility to discern righteously and to judge what paths we are to take for ourselves. In contrast, the lines we draw and the sins we tolerate and the sins we condemn tell God (and others) about who we are as people, and the extent to which we have developed both the mercy and the justice of God, who hates sin passionately but passionately loves sinners.

In looking at the tortured recent history of the Boy Scouts, we are forced to confront another difficulty of life, and that is that institutions do not remain constant over time. Because people change and because socities change, sins that were tolerated in the past may not be tolerated in the future, and the attempt to redress wrongs previously recognized may lead a society and institution and person to fall into new types of sin or to tolerate sinful behaviors that were previously punished. The quest for balance and righteousness, and the proper application of mercy and justice, is not an easy or straightforward matter at all. If it were, someone would get it right, but no one ever does. And so we are all cought in some sort of bind, desiring to please men and God and finding it difficult or impossible to do either. Let us be careful in our well-meaning desire to avoid sin and to warn sinners of the consequences of their deeds, if unrepented, not overlook the sins of others in the past that also required repentance, so that our desire to follow God and to serve Him does not become corrupted and perverted into mere political partisanship with sinners of a different stripe.