Unclear but present danger


It is now evident that Christians unhappy with Christian progressivism will "walk apart," as one catchphrase puts it, separating themselves in worship and in polity from what they see as heresy. The heresy they see is an antinomian view of gay marriage and abortion, along with other symptoms of an ugly syncretism of culture and church that imports the culture's unbiblical ethics into the church. These conservative Christians see in their opponents a rejection of scripture's authority and the lessons of tradition. They will walk apart for the foreseeable future, hoping for changed hearts in those on the other side of the controversy, and awaiting the judgment of history. It seems like a solution that will do for the time being, though no one is really happy with it. But the devil is the subtlest creature we meet with. There is a trap.

Among those Christians rushing away from antinomianism are some who embrace, instead, a mechanistic and legalistic understanding of what Christianity is, a mistake which is as fatal to living in a way that is responsive to the Spirit of God: wrong in a different and opposite way. So at the same time Bible-believing conservatives are fleeing error of one sort, they ought to be on their guard against another sort in their midst.

Legalists are not suitable allies in the fight against heresy, being heretics themselves, just of another bent. It is human nature to suppose that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' but in this case the maxim misleads. Perhaps it always does when Christians apply it. Whose enemies are we supposed to be, anyway?

As I have attempted to say before elsewhere, antinomian and legalist errors are not unbalanced versions of orthodoxy, with orthodoxy to be found somewhere in the middle. They are both wrong clear through, but in mirror-image ways. Both trivialize God in the matter of ethics. One says that God's love is such that your behavior does not matter. The other hands you a checklist: outward conformity means you're all right. One error is no rules; the other is nothing but rules. Both evade the challenge of an interactive, lively and growing moral pilgrimage with God and his people. Both are fatal to the kind of sanctification that, in a lifelong process of growing moral clarity, brings our hearts more nearly into accord with our Savior's.

In the process of fleeing the moral morass in which no firm standards pertain, it's important to see to it that mechanistic compliance with an outward form of godliness does not replace moral laxness, for both deny the role and power of God in the everyday. Again, what is called for is not a balancing act between two misunderstandings of the truth, it is rejection of two related, though mirror opposite, falsehoods about God.

So those conservatives who will now walk apart from progressives will need to watch their footing lest they be tripped up by some of those they walk with. May God's word be a lamp unto their feet.

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