There are invisible forces at work, trying to control our lives. They aren’t the CIA or the FBI, although in some peoples’ cases, they could be a factor as well. It might not even be the devil, although that punk might have a hand in there too. The forces that I’m talking about are just as complicated, and have been at work for a long time.

Politically, we tend to vacillate from liberality to conservatism. Obviously right now, we have a really liberal president who seems to think that becoming socialists would be a good thing and that terrorists and dictators are our friends, but I digress. . . but before him, we had a very conservative president. (I miss Bush. . .) Anyways, the church is not much different. I think that we move slower than the rest of the world, but that’s just been a trend that happened during the past fifty years, maybe a little longer. We tend to sway back and forth between liberal and conservative hermeneutics and theology.

It works just like with politics: we carry on with being one way in particular, and wait until we get burned, and switch! Look at the eighties and nineties, the church was incredibly conservative (as a whole, there are always going to be the odd people who fight the tide. . .) and we had people make HUGE mistakes, including the Bakers, Mike Warnke, Frank Houston, and the list of people who just proved to us that they’re human too. We all make mistakes, but unfortunately, we associate those mistakes with so many things aside from the adamic nature, including the conservative Christian scene.

Anyways, at the moment, people are mid-swing from a conservative approach to the Bible and living to a liberal one, and I’m not sure that we can stop it. Too many people are critical of those who in the past have told them, “drink a beer, and you’ll wake up in hell” or any number of things similar to that. In fact, just looking at contemporary Christian non-fiction right now, it’s obvious that once again, Christian liberties are coming to the foreground of discussion amongst theologians, most of which are telling us that they “prefer their theology on tap” -i.e., they’ve gone LIBERAL!!

Unfortunately, I think that I’m more liberal than a lot of people at my church, which kind of freaks me out, because in my mind, I’ve always been a staunch conservative. I think that I am, but I just refuse to adhere to the traditions that man has developed, simply because they don’t develop holiness in MY life, and because they’re not Bible. So I’d like to say that I’m a conservative theologian with some non-traditional application? I don’t know. . . .

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A buddy of mine hired a personal trainer a few months ago. He had come to the conclusion that he was a little on the round side, and being a short fellow as well, it wasn’t necessarily visually appealing. His trainer sat down with him and the two of them discussed diet, previous activities and goals, but the first thing that he had him work on was balance. I was a little shocked to discover that my friend couldn’t stand on one foot for more than a second without tipping over, because I just assumed that his center of gravity was really low! Just by working on his balance for a week, he lost four pounds, and felt like he was already in better shape.

People aren’t great at balance, we have such a nasty tendency toward extremism. It’s just tons easier to be all or nothing, black or white. Less thought and effort goes into being extreme than being balanced. That’s where this whole back and forth motion of theology comes from. We just don’t like to think, and apparently don’t read the Bible enough to understand that balance, my friends, is a key to following Jesus and living life a little more like He’d have us do it.