I mentioned in my BH post,

It has been said in our Puritan history that we serve a “precise God.” Fine. Then lets all be good “precisionists” precisely where God himself has provided us with precise detail. Dismissing the entire book of Leviticus with a shibboleth that “Christ fulfilled the sacrifices,” so we can go on to spend almost all our time discussing the mechanics of justification and sanctification does not strike me as descriptive of a culture that takes God’s word seriously.

Here you can see a published source relating a anecdote from Puritan history that now has almost mythical status.

The Puritans were overly strict. Often true. Samuel Ward’s college dairy consists of a cataloging of his failings, and his self-accusations include such offenses as these: going “to bed without prayer”, falling asleep without his last thought being of God, “unwillingness to pray”, not preparing adequately for Sunday on the preceding Saturday night, immoderate eating, “also my immoderate laughter in the hall at nine o’clock,” impatience, and talking on Sunday of “other matters than are meet to be talked of on the Sabbath.”

When the English preacher Richard Rogers was lecturing at Wethersfield, Essex, someone told him, “Mr. Rogers, I like you and your company very well, but you are so precise.” To which Rogers replied, “O Sir, I serve a precise God.” One of the names by which the Puritans were first called was “Precisionists.” Of course, everyone is strict about the things he or she values most highly. Athletes are strict about training, musicians about practicing, business people about money. The Puritans were strict about their moral and spiritual activities.

I’m not for a moment going to deny that there are points in favor of this sort of concern. But there is justified hesitation in embracing the way it has been carried out.

For one thing, as a pastor, I’m supposed to to be pastoring everybody who names the name of Christ. The Bible is full of warnings against arrogance and contempt for those who appear weaker–especially in the name of spiritual attainment or even in the name of grace received. So athletic analogies are, to some extent, terrifying. You encourage athletic excellence by excluding anyone not tough enough. That seems a 180 degrees in the wrong direction considering religious reformation. I realize Dr. Ryken intends no such thing (and wouldn’t require that sort of precision). But I think his light defense could easily be seen as revealing something very much at odds to God’s will in the Puritan movement.

(It also seems diametrically opposed to the whole impulse of the Reformation. Here’s Luther liberating us from pilgimages, feeling guilty when we have sex with our spouses, and paying for indulgences, and now we have to feel guilty for falling asleep without thinking about God first or unsuppressed laughter after 8:30pm? Was this a continuation of the Reformation or a counter-reformation?–I note in passing that the Jesuits were filling England with books of rules for daily living and that Puritanism, to some extent, was driven by a mission to provide Protestant alternative books of this sort.)

But, aside from all that, if we serve “a precise god,” I think we ought to be precise about the things he is precise about. How do you get from here to here?

(And how can you expect people catechized by that diagram to even know what Paul is talking about in Romans 14? Who is the brother for whom Christ died and whom we are not supposed to destroy?)