Some years ago I read a scholarly pamphlet which explained how the way people think has changed, especially regarding their belief systems. Although the pamphlet was highly technical in its language, two illustrations cut through the big words to give clarity to how people think.

The first picture is that of a wall made of concrete blocks. The bottom courses of block are the basic and foundational beliefs that one holds. Some examples of those blocks include, “God is real” and “Humans are sinful” and “God will punish sin” and “God is gracious.” Built on that bottom row of blocks is another row based on the first: “Jesus paid the price for sin” and “People who believe in Jesus are forgiven of their sins.” On top of that row of blocks are other rows, rows that deal with how we set priorities, how we interact with others, etc. In this system, the bottom row of blocks is vitally important, for if we knock out just one or two of the bottom blocks, the whole rest of the system weakens and eventually collapses. Salvation becomes irrelevant and standards of behaviour are lost.

We have seen the almost complete collapse of our walls in the past few decades as people stop believing in God and they stop considering the grave nature of sin. With the collapse of the foundation comes the collapse of society as we know it. Values and morality disappear because there is no foundation which supports them.

I am old enough that I tend toward this kind of thinking as do many of those who are of my age. Some of them have left the Christian faith altogether, rejecting the foundations of God’s existence, human sin, etc., and, as a result, they no longer believe anything or live lives that give any indication of a moral standard. Their walls have collapsed completely. On the other hand, those of us who operate with a system built on foundations are very adamant about guarding those foundations, for we feel that even if one or two of the foundational teachings disappear, there will be nothing left. All of life will collapse if those foundations are not maintained.

The second system of thinking, one adopted by many of the younger generation (subconsciously), uses the picture of a spider web. The important (and what we would call foundational) beliefs are the outer ring of the web. The web, we could say, is connected to the core beliefs such as “God exist” and “Humans are sinful.” The next ring would correspond to the second row of blocks, and the third ring with the third row of blocks, etc. As we know, when a spider spins her web, it has a beautiful geometric shape and is often quite artistic. As a child, I sometimes encountered a well-formed web, and I would poke at it with a stick, loosening one of the attachment points. The web would not collapse, but it would deform. It remained a web, but as I detached more of the points, it would grow increasingly deformed. Eventually it would hardly look like a web at all.

The pamphlet explained this more current system of thought in this way: a person may hold to many of the foundational beliefs but may reject a couple of them. For example, they might believe in the existence of God and they might be convinced that Jesus is our Saviour. But, at the same time, they may not believe that sin (or a certain sin) is really all that bad. This results in rather strange life choices. Someone might say that they trust in God, that they believe in Jesus, but they go on to live in sin with their girlfriend without thinking anything of it. Or, as another example, someone might believe in God, understand the gravity of sin, trust in Jesus but not believe that all human beings are created equally in God’s image. They might be highly racist or, as has happened in the past, make fellow human beings their slaves. While attaching themselves to many of the most important beliefs, they still have lives that are badly deformed because they have detached themselves from one or two of what we might call foundational beliefs.

With those who have a system of beliefs built like a block wall, it is generally fairly easy to identify if someone is a Christian. Their entire system falls all at once, and there is often nothing very Christian in how they think or how they live. On the other hand, it is very difficult to determine if a spider-web person is truly a believer. We do have to ask the question: how many of the key beliefs do they need to reject before we stop seeing them as being within the family of God? A deformed spider web is still a spider web, and for the spider, it still serves its purpose even though it might be deformed. There is a point, of course, when it will no longer catch flies, but it is hard to know what that point is.

For someone like myself who thinks in terms of a block wall, it is hard for me to understand how someone can call themselves a Christian and yet willfully and even proudly live and think in ways which are contrary to common Christian doctrine and lifestyle. It is illogical to me, for if something is not built on the foundation, it is wrong. For the person who is of the spider-web mentality, however, there is no real inconsistency. They still have a web of thought that includes most of what it is to a Christian, and they have no real concern about the deformation of their lives. Their inconsistency does not bother them because they still have most of the web of thought.

In the past, guarding the foundational points of the Christian faith was absolutely important because if we did not, the collapse was catastrophic. In our current state of things, we tend to be less concerned that someone hold to all of the important and essential teachings because we still see a web, even though it might be deformed. And this is where we might have reason to be quite concerned. In the 1960s, in Quebec, many people began to view the foundational teachings of Christianity to be either untrue or irrelevant, and the church collapsed with the vast majority of churches becoming nearly empty within a decade. They operated with the block wall principle. That collapse does not appear to be imminent today, at least not in the English-speaking part of North America. But there is another alarming movement, the deformation of Christian teaching. In removing (or ignoring) a few of the essential teachings of Scripture, there has been significant deformation but there does not seem to be too much worry. After all, there is still a web catching flies, and that should be good enough. But we do need to ask the question: if we continue to ignore some of the essential teachings of Scripture, when will what we view as Christianity cease to be Christianity? How much deformation is possible until the church is no longer the church of Jesus Christ? We don’t know, but certainly there is reason to make sure that we hold on to all of the teachings of Scripture so that Christian teaching and life can be beautiful as God intended it to be.

The Christian faith is meant to be a strong wall or a beautiful and intricate spider web. Removing the bottom stones results in collapse. Detaching a few points of the web results in deformation. No matter which system we operate with, a weak wall or a deformed web are not what God intended. It might be good for us to consider this and once again emphasize the importance of remembering that all of the teachings of Scripture are important and not just some of them. In so doing, we will have strong walls or beautiful webs, both of which glorify God.