Thinking Out Loud with Alan Shlemon - Live According to a Plumb Line, Not a Pendulum

Episode Date: March 20, 2021

When you realize your theology is in error, do you overcorrect by swinging wildly to the opposite position? Alan offers a biblical approach to correcting your view, one that looks more like using a plumb line than a pendulum.

If your theology is in error, do you overcorrect by swinging wildly to the opposite position? If so, you might be making another error. And I want you to consider the biblical approach to correcting your view in this March 2021 episode of my podcast, Thinking Out Loud with Alan Schleman. Well, you may have heard the stories, and sadly, it's a pattern that many Christians follow. And here's what it looks like. A believer will grow up with some sort of misconception about the Christian worldview, some aspect about their faith.

And one day he discovers the truth and realizes that his view was mistaken. And he becomes disillusioned with his faith and then reacts by adopting a completely opposite, but also unbiblical position. And so what we often say is, oh, well, the pendulum swung the other way. He went from one extreme to the next. Both positions, however, are wrong. And there's a whole bunch of examples of this type of behavior. Another example is where a girl was raised in a fundamentalist Christian home. And she was told that Muslims are dangerous people. Muslims are the enemy. And then when she went to high school, she met Saeed, who was a very friendly Muslim in her class. Now, Saeed was kind. He was chivalrous. He was respectful of her Christian beliefs. And so all of her preconceived notions were destroyed. And Saeed was nothing like the way her parents had characterized Muslims.

Now, eventually she began dating him and then they fell in love and then she converted to Islam. And so you see the pendulum swung the other way. In another example, there's a family who was attending a conservative church in the Bible Belt area. And one of the common statements that was heard often at the church was that homosexuality is sin. This was kind of drummed into their heads. And it was as if the church disproportionately singled out the sin of homosexuality as one of the most grievous sins. Now, when the son reached high school age, he told his parents he was gay. And so disillusioned, the parents looked for an answer by scouring the internet and asking their friends for support. And so disillusioned, the parents looked for an answer by scouring the internet and asking

their friends for support. And through that process, they came across Matthew Vines and his book called God and the Gay Christian, which is a book that basically supports the idea that one can be gay. In other words, he could, you know, identify as a gay man, live a life satisfying same-sex desires and so on and so forth. You know, marry someone of the same sex and also be a faithful Christian. So the book combines those two ideas. It says, yeah, you'd be a faithful Christian and satisfy your same-sex attractions, okay, through homosexual, sexual, whatever, you know. And so the parents were then relieved to discover this, you know,

quote unquote option. And then they ended up fully embracing pro-gay theology. And so we'd say the pendulum swung the other way. Now, I've also heard multiple testimonies of progressive Christians explaining how they've rejected the legalistic Christian fundamentalism of their youth and now hold a more quote-unquote reasonable position, like being pro-choice or pro-gay or claiming that Jesus was a socialist, you know. So again, we say the pendulum swung the other way. And so what you see here is a pattern that is repeating itself. A Christian, again, becomes aware of an error in their faith, but then overcorrects by adopting a view on the other end of the spectrum. And so the pendulum swings to a position that's opposite of their starting point,

but still wrong in a different way. And so I want to suggest to you that scripture offers a better and more accurate approach to gauge our spiritual life and discover what our position should be on any matter. And that approach is what we'd call a plumb line. Now, a plumb line is a builder's tool, right? It consists of a heavy sort of pointed weight that's attached to a string. And so gravity makes the string hang perfectly straight or plumb. And what that does is it gives a builder a vertical line by which they could build a structure or a wall or whatever it might be.

Now, scripture uses a plumb line as a metaphor for spiritual truth by which we can align our own lives. For example, God tells Isaiah, he says, I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line. This is Isaiah 28, 17. And God also sends the prophet Amos to warn Israel of an impending judgment because of their disobedience. And he says, the Lord was standing by a vertical wall with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, what do you see This is from Amos 7, verses 7 through 8. And so what you see here is the plumb line makes it clear to God's people

how far they've strayed from his perfect will. And so the mistake is to follow the swing of a pendulum rather than adjust your position according to a plumb line. And the problem with swinging the pendulum the other way is that it mistakenly presumes that the opposite position of an incorrect view is always correct. Now, of course it can be, right? But that isn't always the case. And so when you realize you're in error, the biblical approach is to look at a scripture or to look at scripture like a plumb line

and then realign your view according to that unchanged standard. Now, had the people in my previous examples heeded this advice, they'd still be faithful Christians. The girl wouldn't have become a Muslim, but she would just simply recognize that no person, even a Muslim, is your enemy. They're a valuable image bearer of God who needs a pardon. And rather than adopting pro-gay theology, the parents of that child who one day said that he was gay, they would have simply embraced Jesus's sexual ethic while unconditionally loving their son. And the

progressive Christians would have, you know, jettisoned their theological error, basically, and then just simply adopted a more biblical view. And so again, the proper corrective in these cases is to align your views to the plumb line of scripture. And that's why God has given it to us. It's for our good and it's for the health of the church. Well, that's all I have for you today. If you enjoy my thoughts and these topics that I'm covering on apologetics or theology and hermeneutics and so on and so forth, well, be sure to rate or review my podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening to this podcast. And thanks for listening, and we will see you next time.