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 PrintableVersion Slip slidin' awayThe American poet/songwriter Paul Simon wrote about the way human life goes. He described it like this: Slip sliding away... Simon expresses the predicament of human life in general. If you are 'gliding down the highway', you know where you are going to. You are getting somewhere. But that can be an illusion. In fact you think you are on the right lines, but really you are slipping and sliding, you are out of control, carried along by a movement you cannot stop. The brilliance of Simon's imagery lies in the combination of the slipping and sliding. Because the origin of these two motions, which suggest being out of control, are different. We cannot help slipping, for example on a banana skin, but we choose to slide, for example, on the ice with ice skates. Sliding in some way is agreeable, as on helter-skelters or into a swimming pool, but slipping can be disastrous. So Simon got it right in terms of freedom - because we chose to slide - and determinism because we slip. Destined to slip?From a biblical point of view, as sinners we are destined to slip. As sinners we will always slip, and in some way we are out of control. Some things are beyond our control, but on the level of human choice, and responsibility, we choose to slide, to be the sinners we are. We are and do the sins we do. No one can say that our slips exist without us having freely chosen to slide. This describes quite well our freedom and responsibility, as persons. It seems true that if we slip it is because we have already chosen to slide into sin of some sort. This is hard to accept, because we have to recognise that the responsibility is ultimately ours. However, there is another level. This also works out in an institutional sense, and in particular with evangelical institutions or churches. It is a surprising factor that today we see many Christian institutions or churches slip sliding away from biblical values. Would John Wesley recognise the Methodist Church in England today, Charles Hodge accept the teaching of Princeton Seminary, Spurgeon recognise himself in his college or Abraham Kuyper in the Free University of Amsterdam? They would turn in their graves, and it is not just a question of cultural difference. It concerns the gospel. At some point biblical institutions can take a turn and go downhill. Spurgeon called it the 'Downgrade' with regard to the Baptist Union of his day. How does it happen that great Christian institutions go down? Institutions, churches, seminaries, missions, like persons, slide, before they slip. Once they are sliding, they will slip further and further, without control. They can stop the process on the first level, that of sliding, but when they start to slip there is no recuperation possible. The slide leads inevitably to slipping apostasy. Look at the churches in the Revelation of John. Only two churches out of seven are really recommendable, and the others are warned about their slide, or exhorted to redress their slip from apostasy. Why do they slide?Why do Christian institutions slide? They seek to be acceptable to the society around them, they want recognition, rather than serving the gospel in a prophetic way. So Christian institutions quit their moorings. Often people who are serving in them become fat and sleek out of ambition, rather than accepting that to proclaim the gospel will always be an offence. It is natural on the human level to want to be accepted by others. So begins the slide to openness. To be hard or clear in doctrinal statement is always bad today, to be open is always good. In itself this is a form of doctrinal apartheid, exercised by those who are always on the side of openness. However, we have to ask the question why Christian institutions, churches and works are prone to growth, blessing, followed by stagnation and decline, the end result being a slip sliding into apostasy from the gospel. Why? And how can this be guarded against? It is everyone's responsibility to ask this question in our present disastrous church situation in Europe. The apostle says, 'Let him who thinks he stands, take care lest he fall...'. Paul Wells,
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