why we can't compromise

Today we read from Judges 1:1-2:9 in the One Year Bible. The Israelites were told not to spare any of the peoples who lived in the promised land before them, but they did anyway. And they got in trouble for it.

It seems unreasonable to us today that God said to kill everyone in those towns. It also seems unreasonable when the world asks us to compromise today. Come on, Christians. Why can't homosexuals get married to one another? Who are they hurting? Why can't we allow euthanasia? Doesn't that just end the pointless suffering of the elderly? Are you really going to force an 11 year old victim of rape to carry that baby through delivery?? Isn't that heartless?

But what the world doesn't realize.... and what it's easy for us to forget... is that truth is like math. When the church says 2+2=4, you can build a skyscraper on that math. But if the world likes 2+2=6 better, we can't agree. We can't even budge a little, and say OK we'll meet you halfway and say 2+2=5. If you try to build a skyscraper on 2+2=5, it will come tumbling down.

And that's what ethics is. It's a skyscraper built on math. If you get the math right, your ethics will be solid and will support everything that follows. But if you get the math wrong, even just a little wrong, it all falls apart. You end up with broken homes and a skyrocketing suicide rate.

That's why we can't compromise. We can, and must, speak the truth in love. But we can't budge. Because the math is true, even if the whole world says it's not.

God, thanks for teaching us the truth. Help us hold to it.