Needing beach umbrella bearings

I went swimming with my granddaughter at Coney Island, and she learned something about life there that should set her in good stead for the future.

We frolicked for a long time in the briny waves, and after a while I pointed and said to her, “Nassia, let’s move back this way—we’ve drifted.” She insisted that we had not drifted, that we were in the same spot we started at. But I knew she had been looking only at the water, while I had been keeping my eye on the beach umbrella. I was aware, with 53 more summers under my belt than she has, that if you want to know whether you have drifted from your starting place, you don’t go by the looks of the water you are swimming in, but by looking to the beach umbrella’s position, the only true anchor.

And so against all our senses (which told us we had remained in the same position in which we began), we harkened to the infallible marker of the umbrella and trudged our way back to a place aligned with our starting point.

Now more than ever we need the presence of a true anchor for moral practice. Our “senses” are not as reliable as the Word of God, though they seem so reliable and speak as gods. Our feelings may tell us, for example, that it is time to embrace homosexual marriage as a done deal, or even as the loving thing to do. If we did not have the Scriptures to orient us to “true north,” we would as inevitably drift into spiritual error as Nassia and I drifted unawares along the current of the Atlantic on the peninsula of southwest Brooklyn.

The introduction in my Bible says, “The Word of God must always stand above the word of man; we are not to judge His Word, but rather it judges us.” This is a profound challenge for every age’s reading of the entirety of Scripture: to resist the temptation to make the Bible fit our transitory culture-bound notions, and instead correct and fine-tune our notions according to the Scriptures. For as it is written:

“The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple” (Psalm 19:7, ESV).

“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17, ESV).

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