Last summer, my family spent a week at the beach on Tybee Island in Georgia. Like most vacation beach spots, the Tybee shore is dotted with brightly colored condominium rentals anchored in the sand. While swimming in the ocean with my eleven-year-old son, I pointed out a bright yellow set of condos and told him that if he got separated from me or if we drifted down the beach, that particular building was our point of reference. After spending time diving for shells and riding waves into the sand, we looked up and realized we’d drifted nearly a mile down the beach. We couldn’t even see the yellow buildings.
“How did that happen?” my son asked me as we walked down the length of sand back toward the condos. “We never mean to drift,” I told him. “If we don’t pay attention, the current can carry us far away without us even feeling it. That’s why we have to pick out a point of reference that helps us know if we’re drifting.”
The author of Hebrews gives five major warnings about drifting from faith in Christ. We find similar warnings in Paul’s letters where he mentions men by name who used to follow Christ but later “swerved” from truth (see 2 Tim. 2:18, 4:10). The thing about drifting is that it rarely seems to be intentional. Most Christians don’t wake up one day and decide not to follow Jesus anymore. Rather, there’s a gradual pulling away from the truth of Scripture, a lessening of concern about growing in godliness, a paring down of church involvement, and a growing love for the world over Christ. My son and I never intended to drift a mile down the beach. But we did, and we wouldn’t have recognized it if not for the yellow building beckoning us back to safety.
Drifting doesn’t always look like deliberate disfellowship with the church or intentional swerving from the truth. Because drifting happens slowly, we can adopt habits and schedules and goals that prevent us from holding on to the truth of the gospel. Drifting might not look like a swing from Christianity to atheism. But it might look like lessening your ties with your church family over time. It might look like filling your mind with news, entertainment, and social media because that’s easier to ingest than Scripture. It might look like favoring leisure activities over the proclamation of the Word each week.
And it might be easier to drift during a pandemic.
These past four months have changed the way we do nearly everything. From work to education to shopping for groceries—the pandemic has touched most areas in life. Church life is one of the biggest changes for Christians. We went digital, then to outdoor services, then to socially distanced services with reduced occupancy and virtual options. And we know that spikes in local viral cases might mean we shutter our doors again and return to streaming services. I don’t love our services right now—there’s little fellowship, lots of distance, low physical attendance, and an aching to return to a true normal. We have many older members and some folks with compromised immunity who don’t feel comfortable attending yet. Church hasn’t really felt like church since early March.
Yet, it is important to engage with the church in the manner that the leadership has deemed wise for today. Not loving the way services are conducted doesn’t mean I get to disengage from them altogether. When my husband was preaching into a camera in our living room and I was playing the piano for “corporate” singing on our church Facebook page, I did not enjoy the medium through which we were having our church services. But to neglect the manner of meeting together would not have been good for my soul. Even with regulations, modifications, and distancing, I still need the regular connections with my church family to help me think biblically, worship regularly, process the news in community, and help safeguard my soul from living in complete isolation. There is danger in separating ourselves from believers, especially when we’re forced to comply with a certain level of separation to begin with. We can lose sight of our reference point in Christ on our own. It’s more important than ever to stay connected with your church in the ways that they have made connection possible.
“But it’s a global pandemic!” you might say. Yes, it is. And it’s easier than ever to go from churchgoer to fringe member to zero church involvement. And if that’s the case for your corporate spiritual disciplines, it is likely that your individual spiritual disciplines have slipped to nearly nothing as well. When Scripture warns against drifting, the warnings come with reminders of the ways God has equipped us to hold fast. We regularly see in those exhortations that prayer, Scripture, and church connectedness are grouped together (see Heb. 3:12-13, 4:11-16, 10:19-25). Faithfulness in one feeds faithfulness in the others. And neglecting one will likely mean neglecting the others.
I’ve never lived through a pandemic, and I’m guessing neither have you. But saints before us have, and saints after us likely will, too, if the Lord tarries. The calls of Scripture to faithfulness still apply to us here and now in the midst of a global pandemic. They are a protection for our souls in a time when it is too easy to live on the fringes of church life.
Don Carson writes:
“People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.[1]”
In the best of times, we must be vigilant to stand firm. In the worst of times, all the more.
My encouragement to you is this: watch out for the danger of drifting in a pandemic. The author of Hebrews tells us not to neglect meeting together, and “all the more as we see the Day drawing near” (Heb. 10:25). That means that we must keep watch over our souls in community so that we don’t unintentionally swerve from the truth of the gospel. The only way to prevent drifting is to have a fixed point by which you navigate your life. For the Christian, that will always be the inerrant, unchanging truth of Scripture. And we will always need to abide by God’s chosen means of our steadfastness: feeding our souls with Scripture, prayer, and fellowship with the body of Christ. Pandemic or not, the commands and exhortations of Scripture hold true. A pandemic isn’t a time to pull back but to lean harder on the things God has given us to hold fast.
Today, that means we must engage with our churches in the ways the leadership has deemed right and safe. We must not disconnect simply because services are conducted online and can be watched later. Do your best to be as active as you can from a distance, and to be present when possible. If risk is a real reason, then do your best to be virtually present and in regular communication with the church. But if you’re going to sporting events or restaurants but not church, you might be using a pandemic as an excuse. And you might be in danger of drifting without knowing it. A pandemic is not an excuse for a vacation from the faith. We don’t know how long this will last.
For those who are fully engaged, the charge is the same. And yet, it’s more. Those who aren’t drifting need to look out for those who are. Throw a life preserver and pull them back, for as James tells us, “whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:20).
The calls of Scripture to faithfulness still apply to us here and now in the midst of a global pandemic. They are a protection for our souls in a time when it is too easy to live on the fringes of church life. Share on X[1] D.A.Carson, For the Love of God, Vol.2: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God’s Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006), 23.
Photo by Mourad Saadi on Unsplash
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
