Flip-Flops
I don’t like wearing flip-flops. They fall off my feet, they’re noisy, and they make me trip. You can wear them if you like, but I’d just as soon go barefoot.
There’s another kind of flip-flop that bothers me: the human flip-flop, when a person takes a dramatic U-turn in his convictions. Politicians are accused of it all the time, and often rightly so. Some are anti-abortion one week, pro-abortion the next. Today they want to cut taxes, tomorrow they want to raise them.
Sometimes Christians flip-flop, too. It usually goes like this: A Christian recognizes the Bible’s condemnation of some sin, lives by that belief, and teaches it. But then someone he knows and loves, or even he himself, gets caught up in that sin — and all of a sudden he’s changed his mind.
A brother believes what Jesus taught about divorce and remarriage (cf. Matthew 5:32; 19:9) until someone close to him divorces and remarries unscripturally. Then he suddenly decides it’s OK and starts finding all kinds of reasons why Jesus’ words don’t really mean what they say.
A sister believes what Paul said about homosexuality (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10) until a close friend or relative comes out of the closet. All at once she decides that Paul’s teaching is “unclear” or “taken out of context” or “doesn’t apply today.”
What happened? These people have let their feelings get in the way of the truth. They refuse to accept the thought that someone they love (or themselves) is not right before God. Rather than seeking a change in conduct, they take the less painful path of changing the way they look at the Bible.
When we abandon God’s word as our standard in favor of our own feelings, we become disciples of a reckless master. “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord.…The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:5,9). “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12).
