V-Day Follow-up

We had a valentine’s party for multiple churches on Saturday. It was a great time and we had more come than we really expected. The next time we will need a bigger space so that is pretty awesome. Don’t tell anyone but we had dancing. We brought in dance instructors and taught swing dance. The teens seemed to really get into it. The only downside to the evening is just as we were getting ready to shut it down some kid pulled the fire alarm. We know who did it but we couldn’t stop the alarm and the firemen came and kicked us out even though we explained it.

This brings up two very important and related things. Why are so many Christians against dancing? I had to keep the dancing side totally top secret from the adults at the church. It was crazy. The couple of times that I accidentally said the word around an adult you would have thought I said we would be pairing the kids up with porn stars or something. I think they are still stuck on the idea that dancing leads to sex or something. I am assuming this is generally based on ignorance and legalism. What if life really looked like this?

I was an sweet, innocent girl until one day I attended a chaperoned church dance. I don’t know what came over me. Most of the night I stood against the wall like any good Christian girl refusing to get into that evil moving my body in rhythm with the music stuff but then a guy asked me to dance. I looked at my friends and they seemed to be having fun and not running off to have sex. How little did I know. We danced for one song but the next morning I woke up pregnant and addicted to crack. I don’t even know how it happened. Don’t let this happen to you. Friends don’t let friends dance.

I might be wrong but I think that was the essence of what the adults in my church were taught as children. They probably wouldn’t approve of my wife and I dancing so please don’t tell them we are taking dancing lessons because we thought the swing dancing looked fun. We arranged it with the dance instructors and some of the other YPs and their wives that night. It will be a great way for us to build our friendships as we build our relationships with our spouses.

The other related issue, thought I forgot about that, is the mentality that the rules must be followed in all circumstances. The rules say that if there is a fire alarm that the responding fire unit must clear the building until they verify that there is no fire. This is perfectly reasonable under most circumstances. At some point, though, it becomes a complete waste of time. We tried calling them to explain that we caught a kid pulling the alarm. One of the other YPs actually saw the kid as he was pulling it so this is not just a theory. The alarm panel said it was from the pull so it backs up our story. We explained that when they pulled up and they still made us all go out into the cold for an hour while they went through the entire building checking for a fire that we knew didn’t exist. Rules are great, but at some point we are expected to use our brains when interpreting the rules.

If the rule says that the building needs to be checked for fire and there is a witness that can say a kid pulled the alarm as a prank, then I would say the building has been checked. I’m not saying lie. The building really is fire free and any measure of common sense validates that. They don’t just randomly go into buildings looking for fire. They came to this one because of an alarm but the origin of the alarm was explained and it had nothing to do with fire so no need to actually inspect the building to verify that it isn’t on fire. The problem is when we let the rule replace common sense. Let’s try and use our brains for once.

What kinds of pointless legalism and blind adherence to rules have you had to deal with?