Jumpstarter 6 of 10

Direct Answer Bercot’s distinction is that “updating” should mean removing standards tied to issues that “no longer exist” and adding standards for “new challenges,” not relaxing obedience to match the world’s shifting values. The transcript gives principles and examples, but it doesn’t provide a detailed decision process for today’s hot-button issues.

Support from Transcript:

• He notes some standards are tied to their era: Apollotus denied baptism to “charioteers and gladiators,” vital in AD 200 but “non-issues in the 21st century.”
• Wesley’s rule forbidding “buying or selling smuggled goods” was “a huge issue” in 18th-century England but “rarely an issue for most of us” now.
• He observes omissions tied to context: Methodist rules addressed “neither abortion nor divorce” because abortion was illegal and divorce “extremely rare.”
• He warns: “By ‘updated,’ I do not mean… modify its standards to fit the ever-changing dictates of the world.”
• Instead: delete standards about issues that “no longer exist,” and “add new standards to fit new challenges.”