Finding Balance

In my years since becoming a Christian, I have found that people in general tend to be like pendulums that are normally broken to either stay on the Left or Right side of the swing without ever seeing the middle or they are stuck in the middle and never move at all. Indeed the ones that are moving are normally moving so fast that they are banging the edge of the clock casing and may only vary one or two degrees the other way. All three are broken but think they are right. Thus they are unbalanced.

In order to rightly consider balance, we have to leave the clock imagery and think more on a linear scale. That is because we have to look at right/wrong, good/bad, sound or false doctrine. There is no room to swing on such issues though extreme Left or Right are still as broken as those who try to drive down the center of the road on a major highway during rush hour. The middle can be quite dangerous and often leads to muddled, myopic misunderstanding of the issues which ends in paralysis or at best a meager attempt at finding balance that is hindered by fear, ignorance and more often apathy or hypocrisy trying to play both ends against the middle to avoid confrontation or controversy. Often the practice is justified under the guise of love, grace or peace. Yet, there can be no true love, grace or peace without balance. Balance is indeed hard to find.

I have come up with a 1-10 line that I think shows why it is hard to find balance. If we look at Extreme Left as a 1 and extreme Right as a 10 that puts the Middle at 5. Thus we might be led to believe that balance is 5. Yet, that really tends to leave us with the lukewarm situation that Jesus condemned in Revelation as not ever satisfying the need since it is never hot when it needs to be or cold when it needs to be so that it is no warmth for the aching bones or the cold refreshing drink needed by the hot and thirsty. It is just blasé.

Many find the Middle as the way to bring peace to the World and yet Jesus said He came to bring a sword that would bring about division even among families. He was speaking of the Word, which indeed divides people according to how they receive that Word and yet to those who seek to rightly divide it that same Word can bring about unity. It is a savor of life to some and a savor of death to others. Thus balance in the Word will still cause polarity and division and not necessarily peace and unity with all as some hope it will.

In fact, if you see the results of Scripture in action as used by the prophets, apostles and Jesus you will find that its balanced use results in an 8 on the scale. That makes it left of extreme Right and right of the Middle and really far right of extreme Left so that to many people it will appear to be extreme Right from their perspective. And because it is still left of extreme Right they will react to it as vehemently as anyone from the extreme Left or the worried Middle that do not want rock boats.

Balance needs to be viewed from God’s perspective and thus from the Word itself. Remember we are told that His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts so it is not going to be a perfect center on any human scale. You see God is balanced and this world is way out of balance. God was once accused by His people as unequal or unfair or unbalanced and He had to point out that it was their perspective that was unequal, not His. To be balanced it has to be His scale and not ours. That is why on our scale it will come out to an 8 and looks unbalanced from all sides.

How can you tell if you are scripturally balanced? Well, to even start to find it you will have to chuck most of what you were taught no matter what denomination or non-denomination you are as every group has error in it be it intentional or unintentional. We have picked up a lot of man-made hoo-ha and traditions that cloud the Word and block our ears to the still small voice. I am including Baptists, lest you think I believe they are perfect. I think some of them have the best potential for finding balance compared to the rest of the groups, but we have our Left and Right clock casing bangers and blasé Middle folks as well. How do you think I gained some of my knowledge? ;-) I have had to tiptoe through the mine fields for some time.