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| Fred Luter, Pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church |
Dance is more than a physical thing. When you are dancing, God is looking at your heart. Are you dancing to show off that you know how to dance the new dance in town? Or you are purely praising God and your dance steps are just flowing out spontaneously from that heart of praise. (The only manifestly wrong dance steps are the ones that mimick sexual movements or danced erotically.)
But then, there is a principle Paul called expediency principle.
All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not EXPEDIENT: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any (1 Corinthians 6:12 KJV)
It is for mature minds in Christ - those who by reason of use have exercised their mind to discern between right and wrong. So, he says eating food is nothing to him but if it will cause his weak brother to stumble, he will not eat it. What is the import of that?
Gbeseing or not gbeseing may mean nothing to me. If I dance it, it doesn't add to me. If I don't dance it, it doesn't remove from me. So I can consciously make myself not to dance it because of the negativity many of the young minds around me might have attached to it due to the current trend of things in the world; my dancing it would have done only one thing for them - they get emboldened to dance it though they were initially secretly feeling guilty about it.
But that is not even the main issue. By my action, I'm helping them to kill their conscience which I ought to have helped them to gradually build. In the end, their conscience gets thwarted to do even other manifestly wrong things their conscience was not bold enough to do earlier. So, my liberty I have used as an occasion for offence in others. And the Bible says woe unto him through whom offence comes.
Every language is arbitrary. That is, nothing has meaning until language attaches a meaning to it. So, we call it stone because language attaches the name stone to that object.
This applies to everything in life. A dance has no meaning until culture or trend attaches meaning to it. Though you are not bound by that meaning, yet, you are bound by love to help many who are still bound to such meaning since your not dancing it will not in anyway remove from you. And more so, you have many other dancing steps as options.
Many of these invented dances I'm sure I must have spontenously danced them many years ago because I was very creative in spontenously inventing dance steps while praising God then. But whenever the world trending system invents a dance step or attaches a corrupting signification to a dance step, I consciously steer clear of it to help many young ones whose destinies are tied to mine.
We must learn to bear other's burden as a child of God; that is how to lay down our lives for others like Jesus.
Thank you for your audience.
Pastor A.J. Soretire
Gbeseing or not gbeseing may mean nothing to me. If I dance it, it doesn't add to me. If I don't dance it, it doesn't remove from me. So I can consciously make myself not to dance it because of the negativity many of the young minds around me might have attached to it due to the current trend of things in the world; my dancing it would have done only one thing for them - they get emboldened to dance it though they were initially secretly feeling guilty about it.
But that is not even the main issue. By my action, I'm helping them to kill their conscience which I ought to have helped them to gradually build. In the end, their conscience gets thwarted to do even other manifestly wrong things their conscience was not bold enough to do earlier. So, my liberty I have used as an occasion for offence in others. And the Bible says woe unto him through whom offence comes.
This applies to everything in life. A dance has no meaning until culture or trend attaches meaning to it. Though you are not bound by that meaning, yet, you are bound by love to help many who are still bound to such meaning since your not dancing it will not in anyway remove from you. And more so, you have many other dancing steps as options.
We must learn to bear other's burden as a child of God; that is how to lay down our lives for others like Jesus.