One of my favorite childhood memories was splashing around in our backyard pool.  It was an aluminum-walled above ground pool:  4 feet high, 24 feet across, and 72 feet around.  For several summers I swam in that pool, from the time when my head barely poked above the water’s surface until after I could get a running jump and plunge headfirst over the walls…I’m sure my knees are thankful I never hit the top ledge.  Over those years I learned a lot about pools.  I learned it was a terrible thing to lose a ball over the side – the opposite side from the ladder.  I learned that if your sister is in the pool, she’ll make you go get the ball, even if she was the one whose arm made the errant throw.  I learned that if your mom finds out you’re the one who tracked the grass into the pool, then it’s time to get the skimmer and go to work.  In addition to all these things I also learned a bit about the maintenance of the pool, tasks like backwashing the filter, adding chlorine, and checking the pH levels.

The pH test kit was a handheld hunk of plastic with two built-in cylinder chambers in the middle, with a series of red and yellow colored panels on either side.  The red side and yellow side each had gradations in their colors that were meant to match the cylinder filled with pool water in the middle.  My parents taught me to plunge the plastic in the water and fill the two middle tubes with pool water.  Then I added a few drops of chemicals in each tube to test the pH levels of the water.  If they matched the correct color gradations, then all was well.  If not, chemicals had to be added to create the right balance in the pool.

The pH scale measures the acidity or alkalinity of a substance, and you probably know that the further a substance is toward the ends of the scale, the more caustic it is.  Some nasty (or depending on the usage, quite effective) substances lie at the outskirts of the pH scale.  Smack dab in the middle of it, however, is water, a neutral substance.  Testing the pH of pool water is important, presumably because people prefer to leave the water without chemical burns (the UV kind are much more preferable).  Although the human body can generally handle more acidic substances than bases, we still find a common principle from the scale:  Life-giving substances are at the center of it all.  The water in the middle is flanked by substances like milk and blood.  By extension, our lives find enjoyment when we are balanced.

One of my professors, Dr. Tim Beougher, was fond of saying that when driving, you don’t want to swerve to avoid a ditch on one side of the road only to crash into the ditch on the other side.  In these posts designed to encourage people to stay strong in their faith amid the ditch of cultural revolution, we could easily swerve into another, more insidious ditch: religiosity.  As Christians who indeed have the revealed truth and access to the living water promised by Christ, we can very easily retreat into our religious circles and condemn the culture around us while taking occasional pot shots at it to make ourselves feel good.

To make sure I am being clear, I am still advocating for the Christian faith based on the divinely revealed word of God, in which we find the message of the gospel, the salvation available to us only through Christ and only by explicit and active faith in Him.  That faith will stand in direct opposition to the world and will put us at odds with the competing worldviews and philosophies of the day.  It will require sacrifice and make us uncomfortable and cost friends and job promotions.  It will spur us to love others as we love ourselves, especially in reaching others with the same message.  That, believe it or not, is the central position.  The water of life is at the zero mark on the spiritual pH scale.

What then, is at the religiosity end if this isn’t it?  We have already made some descriptions of secular philosophies and worldviews that are to be avoided.  That’s the easy part for some of us.  When it is, we have a much more difficult time pointing out the other ditch, which is closer, more inviting.  The frightening thing about this ditch is that it is the one Jesus had the most issues with when He walked our world.  The Pharisees were the religious establishment who over and over clashed with the Lord over even the most minute issues.  Keeping them in mind, along with some other parts of Scripture, we begin to get a picture of what the religiosity ditch is like.  Some of my next posts will concern this issue.  When it comes to being undiluted in our faith, we must recognize that sin creeps into our lives wherever it can, from both the world and the church.  So any writing about this subject must in turn deal with matters from both areas or face the accusation of being myopic.

What ideas, ideals, or actions do you think characterize this other ditch of religiosity?  I’d love to discuss them in the future.