The False Hope of 10 Degrees

I went to a Bible study last night, which is sort of ironic, given we didn’t read the Bible. Instead we looked into C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. Lewis told us of how the Bible spends much time on the last few hours of Jesus’ life - how we have half a Gospel for everything up to that point, and the other half is focused on the Crucifixion. That is its importance.

Then we broke off and talked of repentance, because Lewis mentioned it in his pages. And an interesting quote was made. Lewis stated that those without Christ who are turned 180 degrees away from God, need to turn to God more than those only, say 10 degrees off. But it is harder for them to turn around. It’s harder for them to break away from those things that keep their rudder astern. It’s harder to loose those things that hold them fast.

“That is a good point,” I thought. Then the realization came to me: “What about those who are only off by 10 degrees?”

There is one solitary up-side to being turned 180 degrees from God: You are totally backward. Why is this a good thing? Because it is easy to tell when you are going backward. You’re sailing in the wrong direction and you know it. The stars tell you and the waves push at you in vain and your sins mock you. It is so incredibly difficult to shake loose of those things, to turn around, but you know. You know you are going wrong, you know you can’t turn this ruddy ship by yourself, and that is when you beg to God for forgiveness - because you are not strong enough to turn the thing around alone.

It must be horrible to be in that sort of situation. I won’t say I know what that’s like, because I don’t. But I imagine that salvation must be that much more precious for someone who comes from dire straights.

But what about those at 10 degrees?

There is a James Bond movie (not one of the good Sean Connery’s; it’s a Pierce Brosnan) in which the villains steal a digital encoder, which looks much like a nice pen set box. The trick of this encoder is that it can send a ship slowly off-course - very slowly. In the movie, by slightly shifting the degree reading of the ship, it gradually headed off-course, wound up in the South China Sea and bad stuff ensued. Fill in your own Bond ending here, if you haven’t seen this movie. You know how it ends.

The ship, mind you, was not sent reeling off-course. It was slow. Gradual. A degree at a time. So insignificant that the crew didn’t even know how far gone they actually were.

This is us at 10 degrees.

The problem is that we figure that as long as we are only 10 degrees off, we’re doing pretty good. We’re not perfect, but we’re pretty darn close. 10 degrees… that’s not half bad! We must be excellent Christians! And we show up for church every week and come to the functions and even sometimes put a little extra in the offering plate. Because we’re only 10 degrees off, right? Just 10.

Keep sailing at 10 because 10 will gradually become 20. Or 30. It will be such a slow shift you won’t even notice. It will be in the little things, things that slip by your net. In your mind you’ll still believe you are right at 10 degrees, just a little off from perfection. And we slowly become father and farther away.

The scariest part of it all is that usually when we think we’re sitting at 10 degrees, we don’t really need God to help us as much. We must be doing OK on our own. We don’t realize our need.

I can see Him asking us, “Please, just let Me show you the compass,” but we wave it off. We don’t need it. We know where we are. 10 degrees.

Then, without even knowing how it happened, we find ourselves completely off of the map.

Truthfully, we won’t ever be right on path - we can’t be perfect. But we can’t ever get comfortable with our heading, otherwise we’ll lose our way. I do not write this to point any fingers. I’ve been aimlessly sailing for far too long. Its a warning. Mind the compass, and keep a weather eye.