accusing others of legalism?

Yesterday, I wrote about legalism. A few of the thoughts I've been thinking about it in the last few days. You can read that post here.

There's one more question that has been running through my head the last few weeks:

Do we too easily accuse people of legalism?

Growing up in the church, I've heard the word legalism thrown around often. And I've sometimes wondered if all of the times it was actually the right word to be using.

It seems pretty obvious to me that we do need to do things to grow in our relationship with God. That does involve doing things like reading our Bibles, spending time in prayer, etc. And we'll all do those things in ways that are different from other around us.

Sometimes I've heard the term legalism thrown around when someone was talking about what worked for them in their relationship with God, when it really wasn't the right term to use. The person wasn't saying that everyone had to do thing the same way they did, or that what they were doing was how they were saved. The person was simply sharing about their own relationship with God. That's not legalism.

We need to be careful not to fall into the trap of legalism in our own lives. But we also need to be careful that in our attempts to avoid it, we don't wrongly accuse other of legalism just because what works for them is more scheduled or specific than what works for us.