Charles Price (pastor of The Peoples Church in Toronto) tells the story of a friend of his who went to the Netherlands to share the gospel with Dutch people and became friends with many Dutch Christians. He was amazed to find out how distressed Dutch Christians were with the state of American Christians. You see, they were struggling with the style of dress and the application of makeup that women in America had taken up and was now a part of the Christian culture. They felt that this was a worldly sin that had crept into the church. They would never let the world impact them and apply makeup as the Americans did.
His friend was amazed to see how upsetting it made the Dutch Christians. So upsetting that he saw women and men cry tears of sadness. He watched as those tears ran down their faces and dripped off the edge of their noses... and dripped into their beer and overtop of their cigarettes as they lamented at the worldliness of American Christians.
That’s the danger of legalism. In trying to honour the word of God we will contextualize our faith in every time, in every country and with every group of people trying to make our faith fit into black and white categories.