People of the Pendulum

The last few weeks, at Journey Christian Church, we have been going through 1 Peter, covering topics like the authority of God’s word, marriage and homosexuality.  Some pretty relevant issues that we wrestle with today whether or not we’re involved with the Church.  As I’ve been reflecting on what we’ve discussed, I realized that there is a trend that occurs both in history and today: we follow a cultural pendulum.

As human beings we tend to swing between extremes.  We have a predominantly “black and white” perspective.  People are categorized as being “pro” or “anti”, there is no middle category typically available and there is not much room allowed for compromise or even a civil conversation.

The unfortunate truth is that the Church has followed the same pattern and suffered the same affects as the rest of the world.  Moral confusion, rampant divorce, chaos due to the rejection of absolute truth, identity crisis etc.  The thing that I have been investigating and thinking about the last few weeks is why.  Why do we typically on deal in extremes and what causes a “swing” of our cultural pendulum?

The simple answer to “Why” is, ever since sin entered the world through Adam, man-kind has been in a constant state of confusion and brokenness.  All the issues that we see today follow Solomon’s conclusion in Ecclesiastes: there’s nothing new under the sun.  The same old issues are just packaged differently in different eras.  

For example, in Romans chapter 6, Paul addresses the problem that the Church is taking the grace of God as a license to do whatever they want with no accountability or reverence for God.  Identical to what’s happening today for the majority of the American Church, where Jesus has been pushed out of personal lives and is only involved when blessing is desired. But, Paul early on in his ministry confronts the early trends of legalism in the Church as gentile believers were being forced to abide by Jewish laws of circumcision.  Almost right off the bat in his life in ministry he has to wage war against legalistic tendencies of individuals who had already confused the point of the Gospel being about grace through Christ.  We see examples of that all over and the media today especially loves to shine a spotlight on it.  Law without any application of grace, breeding a self-righteous people that cast judgment on the world and their “gospel” is more about scaring people towards the God.  We’ve probably all experienced those extremes in our lives.

Now, in terms of cause, I can only speculate from what I’ve observed in my own generation.  As a 24 year old, those my age have typically taken “swings” in perspective in response to what we have seen or experienced from watching the previous generation.  Many of those who have grown up in the Church have seen hypocrisy and felt the negative affects of legalism, so now my generation is unfortunately characterized by holding a position that is all about “love” completely void of submission to the Lordship of God and his Word.  More than 50% of my generation has experienced the destruction of poor marriages and divorce, so now more than ever people hold the perspective that marriage is in some ways opposed to our new age definition of “love”.  We’ve witnessed graceless condemnation of those who are tempted by and embrace same sex attraction.  We know that’s not right so we’ve swung to the other side of the spectrum and most commonly take a stance of complete acceptance because, who are we to “judge” what love is or is not.  With so many topics and areas of life, my generation has made those swings because we’ve seen the damage done in the past and thought that the best way to counteract it was to do the exact opposite.  Still, it’s not difficult to see how these generational “swings” are now inflicting their own unique damage to the world.

Now, I try to follow the motto by God’s grace, “when in doubt, look to Jesus” and when dealing with this issue of extremes, its very interesting to see where Jesus lands.  Christ pushes us to find a middle ground and shows us how to find it.  He calls the legalistic to repent of their self-righteous, law enforcement and look to him (John 5:39).  Jesus also calls those whose lives are consumed with sin that the desires of their hearts are valid, but they need to look to him for them to be satisfied (Matthew 11:28; Jon 4:14).  Although it is delivered in different ways, his solution to those in both extremes is the same: Himself.  It is hard to be legalistic when you are intimately following the calling of Christ to love your neighbor and when we understand how the Gospel compels to be gracious to others.  Simultaneously, the love, identity and fulfillment we seek as human beings so often in all the wrong places can only be satisfied through Jesus Christ and when we find it through His Gospel.

So, I want to encourage all of us together, no matter where you are in life now, what your background is or where you stand, we need to look to Jesus.  His Gospel is what gives us a happy medium.  He lived as an example of what it looks like to perfectly balance truth and love.  Following Him is not only the way that God calls us to live which  glorifies him, but it is also the path to the ultimate fulfillment of our hearts’ desires for identity, purpose and love.  Which are valid desires that we are meant to have as creations of God, and we should be passionate about them.  But without Christ as the focal point of our passion, the world will continue to be damaged and frustrated by the inability to completely fill the voids of our souls.  Once the pendulums stops swinging, there will finally be peace.