Winter weather is upon us as Christmas lies behind us and the New Year fast approaches. The excitement of shopping, the worry over choosing just the right gift, and the hours spent wrapping them occupied our free time much of this month, but for those living in snowy climes, parents also had to make time for outdoor winter fun with their kids. In big cities, even if it doesn’t snow, ice skating rinks are often created outdoors, and in the country and small towns, if a hill exists and snow has fallen, a sled or snow board will be sliding down it.
When I was young, we lived south of Terre Haute on what was called the “reservation” of the Federal Penitentiary where my dad worked. The land was flat except for a ditch along the road. My parents, born and bred in Minnesota, had a pair of wooden cross country skis and a sled tucked away in the garage. When a nice, deep snow fell, I could be found sliding around the yard on the skis which were much too big for me. But what I really wanted was to slide down a long, snowy hill on the sled. Alas, all I had to slide down was the ditch along the road. I quickly found out that the ditch was only a couple of inches deeper than the sled was long, so I pretty much lay on the sled, tipped it over the brow of the ditch and went thunk as it hit the bottom of the ditch. So much for my sliding down slippery slopes!
In 323 B.C. Alexander the Great conquered the Holy Land, then known as Palestine. After his demise, the Greek Empire was divided between the Ptolemy and Seleucid Greeks, and control of the Holy Land eventually fell to the Seleucids in 221 B.C. under the Seleucid king Antiochus III. While Alexander and the Ptolemies who followed him allowed the Jews to follow their religious rituals, Antiochus III marched into the Temple, removed the altar and the Menorah, and established the worship of Zeus there. Many Jews found it easier to submit to the ways of the Seleucids, gradually adopting their religious practices. Judas the Maccabee, however, began a guerilla warfare that eventually ran out the Greeks and returned the Torah and traditional Jewish tradition to Palestine for over eighty years.
By the time of Christ, three groups had arisen in what was now a Roman controlled Palestine; the Sadducees, who continued to adhere to the Torah while adapting to Roman ways in order to become part of the ruling class; Zealots, who were militant Jewish conservatives; and Pharisees, who were the liberal Jews of their time, adapting Mosaic Law and the Prophets to conform to the mores of their day. Both the Sadducees and the Pharisees had slid down that slippery slope of adapting and modernizing the infallible Word of God to better fit into their society.
Many Christians and Christian churches today are like the Jews under Greek rule or like the Pharisees of Christ’s time. They either slide down the slippery slope into the practices and beliefs that are contrary to God’s Word, or they try to modernize the interpretation of His Word to “better fit a modern society.” Of the two, I believe the Pharisees are the worst. They have studied God’s Word, but choose to twist it to make it more palatable to the unchurched of the 21stcentury. They ignore scriptures such as Romans 12:9 which says “Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good,” in order to emphasize the words of Christ in Matthew 22:39, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”Indeed, as Christians we are to love our neighbors, but that does not mean that we should accept blatant sin as just our neighbor’s personality quirk. Indeed Jesus refused to condemn the woman caught in adultery, but he did not tell her that if she chose to live an adulterous life, that was okay with Him. Instead he admonished her to “Go and sin no more.”
Scripture after scripture in the Bible condemns the sin of homosexuality, but because the non-religious community has chosen to accept homosexuality as simply a different life choice, many pastors now perform gay marriages and some denominations accept homosexuals into the clergy. It is true that none of us is without sin, but the true Christian repents daily of his/her sins and endeavors not to repeat them. How can a true Christian live a life of such blatant sin as practicing homosexuality and yet profess to follow the precepts of God and preach against sin to a congregation? Many churches and pastors today should read Jeremiah 23:1-2 where God through the prophet Jeremiah warns them, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture!” says the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel against the shepherds who feed My people: “You have scattered My flock, driven them away, and not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for the evil of your doings,” says the Lord.”
But homosexuality, like the acceptance that God did not create the heavens and earth, nor did he create only man and woman but rather left it up to humans to choose which of a myriad of genders they wish to choose to become, has become gradually accepted by many so-called Christians and Christian churches as being normal modern life. Lying and hypocrisy are also fine if they are convenient to your ends, though not well accepted in others. Scriptures which teach against such things are old-fashioned and no longer relevant, they say.
Likewise, many Christians have come to accept that a woman’s right to control her own body extends to snuffing out the life of a growing child within her womb. It is her choice, her decision, they parrot. But is it really? I remember years ago seeing a large billboard put up by a Catholic family’s place of business which showed a baby and read, “Kill her today and it is abortion. Kill her tomorrow and it is murder.” I used to think that was a bit over the top, although I had to admit it was true. But I have since come to realize that telling the truth is never wrong. Aborting an unborn child by choice ends his or her life just as surely as smothering a newborn in his or her crib. But the first has been made an acceptable killing by the godless, and countless so-called Christians have been pulled down the slippery slope of agreeing with them. “A woman has the right to do as she wishes with her own body,” the mantra goes. So ending the life of her unborn child in a painful and grotesquely barbaric manner is perfectly fine. Attempting to end her own life, however, is a criminal act in some states. How have we as a largely “Christian” nation become so illogically barbaric? How have we slid down that slippery slope?
Many Christians have just been beaten down by the constant barrage of the unbelievers and the gradual changing of laws and traditions. Years ago, for example, only essential personnel like doctors, nurses, police, and fire fighters worked on Sunday. For everyone else it was a day of rest, patterned after the seventh day of creation when God rested. Most families attended church in the morning and again in the evening, staying at home in between since stores were not open. Now, it is difficult to find a store that is closed on Sunday or a church that has Sunday evening services. Even the most devout Christian may be found in Walmart on a Sunday after church if there is no milk for Monday morning. The slippery slope.
In early America, many children learned to read with sentences such as, “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all” and Bibles were found in every school (many of which served as churches on Sunday). School opened with prayer and everyone could recite the Ten Commandments by heart. Now, many school administrators get nervous if a teacher has a Bible in the classroom, prayer has been banned even from graduation unless students initiate it, and the Ten Commandments have been banished from most public places—schools and townhalls included. And that is a strange thing.
I can see that atheists might want to get rid of the first three commandments, “I am the Lord thy God! Thou shalt have no other Gods but me!,” “Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain!”, and “Thou shalt keep the Sabbath Day holy!” If they don’t believe there is a God, they certainly wouldn’t like these verses, but the rest, while condemning things that people do every day, also are giving advice for a better life for either the God-fearing or the atheist. Honor your parents. Don’t murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t lust after someone else’s spouse. Don’t covet something that belongs to someone else. If everyone followed these, the world would be a far better place, but because they are the commandments given by God to Moses, “they must be banned from secular areas,” the non-believers shout.
Sliding down a slippery snow covered slope on a sled or a snow board is great. Sliding down the slippery slope of secularism is not. How can we avoid being caught up in the idea that what the Bible teaches is somehow no longer relevant to our lives? How can we avoid joining the apostate? Our safety lies in reading God’s word and knowing what it says. In Psalm 119:105 we read “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” And in Hebrews 4:12-13 “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.”
Nor should we fail to attend church regularly for the encouragement of other Christians as Paul write to the Hebrews. “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Let us be like the Christians of the Church of Philadelphia to whom God said, “I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown”(Revelation 3:8-11).
Let us not be like the Church of Laodacia in Revelation 3:15-17 to whom God said, “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:”
Many in this world are spiritually wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. We must take care that we do not join them. Let us not go down that slippery slope!