Drifting

C.S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters, “The safest road to hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” He was not, of course, stating that any path to hell would be “safe” for us to take, but rather that a smooth, uneventful series of days, months and years can often get us there more effectively than isolated instances of flagrant rebellion. We often think we have to make sudden, jarring detours from “the narrow way” (Matthew 7:14) to lose our salvation, but that is simply not the case. Many souls have made shipwreck of their faith (1 Timothy 1:19) not by steering it in the wrong direction, but simply by allowing it to drift idly. Without a steady and strong hand on the rudder, disaster and destruction are inevitable.

The currents of life do not remain completely constant in our ever-changing world, but one thing remains: they rarely if ever take us in the direction God would have us go or leave us in the place God would have us stay When we wear the clothes most people wear, look at the things most people looking at and do the things most people do, we should not be surprised to find ourselves going to the place most people will go. Jesus said, “the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it” (Matthew 7:13). Without conscious and constant direction from God’s word, we can hardly help but veer from His way. We can find our standards of decency decaying — not all at once, but gradually, almost imperceptibly. Then one day we wake up in a place we would have condemned in the strongest of terms in days past, but now we have come to accept and even embrace it. We can attribute it to changing cultures or changing times, but it is we who have done the changing.

It is easy to confuse drifting with stability. We make no changes to the status quo, and we assume we will wake up every day in the same set of circumstances. But this assumes the world around us will not change, and we know for a fact that this is not the case. As Hebrews 6:19 reads, our hope in Jesus is “an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast”, that is safely lodged “within the veil” — that is, in fellowship with God. But if we do not attach ourselves firmly to that anchor, we will one day wake up without it. If a captain knew someone on his ship was sawing away at his anchor chain, he would do everything in his power to get that saboteur off before he did permanent damage — and in the meantime, he would constantly inspect the chain to make sure of its integrity. We know that Satan and his servants, many of whom are disguised as servants of righteousness, are hard at work to destroy our souls (2 Corinthians 11:14-15); it is naïve in the extreme to passively assume they will be unsuccessful.

Drifting can become a permanent state. The New Testament speaks of those who have let their faith decay to such a degree that “it is impossible to renew them again to repentance” (Hebrews 6:4-6; 2 Peter 2:20-22). And God makes no distinction between such ones and those who have never known His grace. Hebrews 2:1-3 reads, “For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it. For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” If the Old Testament teaches us anything, it is that the faithful can drift away from the Lord. Let us not neglect our faith, and in so doing lose it.                                                                     

                                                                                                            - Hal Hammons