Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
The old slippery slope.
First, the initial kernel of compromise: He leaves the church in which he was raised–the “best” church, the only “orthodox” church, the only “doctrinally pure” church.
Next, he argues that so-called full doctrinal agreement is neither necessary nor even possible.
Before you know it, he’s claiming that human reason ought to play an important role in one’s faith life–serving as a means by which to check faith against reality.
Then the inevitable: Flirting around with old-earth creationism and even full-blown theistic evolution.
Soon enough, he’s re-imagining hell, advocating inclusivism, and even kicking around the possibility of universal salvation.
By this point, he’s slid so far that he’s questioning the Old Testament portrait of God and even the inerrancy of Scripture.
That slope, how it slips.
A quick side stop: I’d like to emphasize that my spiritual and intellectual journey is my own. By no means do the various steps along the path outlined above follow any necessary progression, nor are they directly related. In other words, I’d like to try to defuse the notion that the first step (namely, leaving the church of my youth) sets one on an inevitable slide toward theological liberalism. One can share in some of my concerns without therefore sharing in all of them.
Alright, back to the slope. The main worry, it seems, is that if one begins “watering down” the message of Scripture (or at least, if one is perceived to be doing so), such a course can only lead toward the eventual abandonment of Christianity altogether.
No. No. No. Is our faith in Jesus Christ reducible to: “For the Bible tells me so”? Or rather, is our high view of Scripture rooted in our trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior? Which is primary: the Bible, or Jesus Christ?
One might immediately interject: “But faith comes by hearing!” (Romans 10:17). But I’m not trying to argue that the testimony of Scripture has no bearing on our faith as Christians. Of course it does! Rather, what I’m trying to say is that our faith can be (and I would say should be) fully compatible with the external evidence. Many Christians seem to think that the case for Jesus Christ stands or falls with our reading of Scripture–to the extent that the latter gets “watered down” (that is: evangelical orthodoxy is challenged), the former gets swept away.
I can’t disagree more fervently! In my own case, at least, the basic Christian message resonates at the very core of my being. That is, the overall narrative of human fallenness and need for a Savior, as well as the specific revelation of God’s radical love manifested in the person of Jesus Christ, aligns with my deepest intuitions.
But it’s certainly not just our intuitions that ought to either confirm or falsify the case for Jesus Christ. There exists a ton of historical scholarship that speaks to the question, and to begin to evaluate the historical reliability of the gospels, Christians would do very well to acquaint themselves with the research–both for and against.
In short, if one conceives of evangelical orthodoxy as the high and stable plateau, from which any departure sets one on a slide into darkness, then I can understand the slippery slope mindset. If on the other hand, one conceives of God–our creator and the author of all truth–as the pinnacle toward which we should be striving, then the abandonment of evangelical orthodoxy (whether in full or in part) may very well be a step in the right direction.
