Doses in the Long Run

There is a sense in which this world tends toward disorder. Order and life appear through constant renewal.The story of the Bible is one in which the fall pushes everything toward decay, but sin is not the only force at work - God is at work also. He creates, sustains, and renews all things. You might say this life is a battle between the entropy of sin and the renewing grace of God.

Engaging in that battle on some scale is a part of the calling of every believer. It is up to every generation to discern what renewal looks like in it's own time and place. However, because theology is often done in opposition to what came before it the danger in this process is that instead of reviving the whole gamut of Biblical truth, each generation only renews that portion of truth which counters the blind spots and weaknesses of the previous generation.

To put it in a word picture: imagine you have yellow paint that you want to turn into green paint. The problem is the paint you have now has become too yellow; there are two ways to correct this: 1. Go buy blue paint or 2. Go buy green paint. If you mix the blue paint with the yellow paint it will become green, but only in passing. Keep mixing the blue and the whole thing will become blue, and you will have only traded one wrong color for another. If you buy green paint it might take longer to change the color of the yellow paint, but it will become green and stay green. Now go from the somewhat silly analogy of paint back to the process of renewing Christianity in the world. In trying to renew the present landscape of Christianity there is a tendency to just try and add “doses” of the “other side." For example, if Christianity has become too modern, just add enough doses of postmodernism and the whole ship will sail true. The dose mentality only has the power to be true in passing, but in the end, unless the color we are adding to the mix itself represents the full gamut of biblical truth, then we will only be trading one set of strengths and weaknesses for another. What was intended for correction becomes a pendulum swinging into a new kind of danger.

That is not to say that it is never appropriate to give a “dose” of correction. Christians need to have both a wide-lens and a tight-lens when seeking to live out the Bible. Sometimes what is called for is the tight-lens, focusing on a certain part of God’s truth applied to a certain situation. The right tight-lens truth applied in the life of an individual person (or a culture) can mean life, peace, and truth. The tight-lens unbalances truth, and does so rightly as long as it is consistent with the wide-lens view of all the Bible teaches. The danger comes in when the unbalanced dose is presented as the point of balance itself.

In the process of renewing Christianity the unbalanced dose looks right because it is so opposed to the sins of the past that it is trying to correct, but that is only looking at the short term. As the reactionary theology spreads and becomes the new dominant theology new generations will grow up beneath its umbrella who never had the benefit of both sides. They will begin with the unbalanced dose as the starting point and whatever truth the reactionary theology did not retain, they will not retain.

Like shells fired from a shotgun, ideas tend to spread out over time and have unintended consequences. Christians must be far-seeing so that today’s solutions are not tomorrow’s dead zones. Believers must know the Bible and preserve the full gospel, unless in reacting to a certain cultural circumstance we do violence to scripture and sow the seeds of error into the church. If it is not right in the long run it is not really right in the short term either.