Backsliding

A modern day image of an ancient sermon illustration told by Jesus of Nazareth -- a crumbling $700,000 vacation home on a collapsing bluff above Lake Whitney has drawn nationwide news coverage. According to news reports, multiple factors may have contributed to the bluff’s collapse, including erosion, the weight of the home’s leveling material and long-term drought combined with recent heavy rains that might have moved the topsoil. It may be added that questionable judgement on the part of both owners and builder may have contributed to the home's demise in keeping with the precarious location of the dwelling to begin with. In any case, the conditions that led to the eventual demise of the structure deteriorated not suddenly, but over time. 

This reminds me of a word from my childhood vocabulary, a word seldom heard in church these days - "backsliding." I don't need to search for a dictionary to understand; I can easily define it according to my own experience. Backsliding is the slow but steady erosion of one's spiritual moorings: Gradual compromise, auto-sabotage, self-induced spiritual amnesia. This is the reality of the lost sheep described by Jesus in Luke 15. Sheep never stampede over a cliff in bison-like fashion; instead, grey-white wooly creatures stray one clump of better looking grass at a time, until the shepherd is first out of sight, and then a distant memory. No wonder Scripture consistently compares human beings to sheep. I am no innocent lamb; I am an obstinate ram, flint like in my determination to go my own way.  I was created to be a masterpiece, but sit precariously on a crumbling cliff caused by my own spiritual erosion. The remedy may seem drastic, but cascading mansions require dramatic measures. I will arise and return, regardless of the distance and disturbance, and revisit the moment when the relationship was new, before my first glance away toward greener grass. I will relive the wonder of endless grace and absolute forgiveness, and in the wake of first love, I will live once again in the shadow of the shepherd.