  I find myself thinking of Christian liberty too often in terms of abstracts. It comes, I know, from growing up in an individualised quasi-American anticulture, from regarding liberty as a concept to be merely a list of things that yes, I can do -- but of course, that approach is deeply flawed. And thus our current concept of what "freedom" is comes to be overbalanced on the freedom and very light on the responsiblity .
Sort of a culture of licking all the icing off the cake. When you're done, all you have is a sick stomach and a cake that would appeal mainly to barbarians. Christian liberty is the same way as secular liberty, and the modern evangelical looks much like the the modern citizen who enjoys his vacation in Florida but doesn't like to vote. It's as if Christian liberty were a gold rush, and millions of people are flooding into a metaphorical California in search of a few nuggets of the yellow stuff, forgetting that they're all the while trampling down another man's vineyards.
I'll take an example. We all know, for instance, that there's nothing morally distinguishing about one's middle finger. It's just a finger. On the other hand -- so to speak -- the cultural component of raising one's middle finger to the sky doesn't involve so much telling your pagan fellow drivers to look up as it communicates a certain vulgar dislike. So one might say that there's nothing wrong with sticking up one's middle finger, but then again, there's something quite wrong with sticking up one's middle finger. And of course, the human mind is legalistic, so we like to pick at nits and split hairs about things like this, and I'm sure someone's going to read this and go, well what about if I accidentally wipe my eye with my middle finger?
Have I sinned? And I will, of course, tell that special someone to go soak his head. All this to say that we just need to know what things mean . What does the middle finger mean? Well, that's obvious. And if it's not obvious, I'd suggest taking it up with your village's elders. What does spikey hair mean? That's suddenly not so obvious. There are those who will suggest that it implies rebellion.
And -- in my own view -- it did, at least fifty years ago. But we no longer live in an age where one can count on one's castle to stand for three hundred years; cultural mores change quickly, and they didn't have so much gel in the 18th century. This means more than anything that the debate has shifted. It's shifted from what do the scriptures say? (which is, admit it, pretty darn clear) to how do I apply this culturally?
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And this tends to be a more difficult task.
I, for one, am not trained to think in the context of now. I live and act in the context of now, but hardly think that way. Which is interesting, because it seems that we argue in a perfect world and fail at living out that perfect world in an imperfect reality; we're all like closet communists, refusing to take notes on human nature, preferring to discuss how Marx would function in Utopia. 
