Failed Horizons
“Dave, I want to show you something.” My flight instructor took control of the two-seat Cessna. Moments later the airplane pitched over. The sky disappeared from the windshield as we plunged earthward, spinning wildly. I felt like I was going to die as I braced against gravity. We were in what pilots call a spin.
While the fear factor was real, I had asked for this very experience. Flight training focused on avoiding spins, but I had thought it would be good to at least experience one. My instructor had turned down the suggestion at first. Some of the gauges on the instrument panel depended on stabilizing mechanisms called gyros. The violent forces of a spin were too much for these devices. They had to be temporarily disconnected, or caged, before a spin to prevent permanent damage. The gyros in this particular airplane couldn’t be caged, and he didn’t want to risk a repair bill. He later decided one spin probably wouldn’t hurt anything. Those moments of terror followed.
After what seemed a whirling plunge toward death, the instructor yanked the plane from the spin. The airplane returned to straight and level flight. One of the gyro-controlled instruments was in trouble, though. The horizon indicator normally displayed a picture of the airplane’s action in relation to the horizon. It was a reliable guide for flight in darkness or bad weather. Now its mechanical picture whirled uncontrollably. My instructor had apparently misjudged the effects of one spin.
The gauge eventually stopped spinning, but its troubles weren’t over. It remained sluggish and imprecise for a day or two before returning to normal. Fortunately, that particular trainer wasn’t used in bad weather.
I passed my flight test shortly after that adventure, ran out of money, and dropped out of aviation. Almost thirty years have passed since, yet I find myself part of a group that has failed to protect a very important gauge. The risks are real even though the situation doesn’t seem very dramatic.
The gauge in question is a spiritual one. The group is the evangelical Christian community. God has also given us a “gyro” that remains stable when the situation around us gets confusing. The Bible remains unchanged regardless of spiritual darkness, stormy times, or personal inexperience. In the church, we gauge our own movements and follow Christ regardless of the circumstances because we can compare what we do with that stable, unchanging Bible.
But church history includes some spins. For instance, many years ago, large numbers of professing Christians compromised with atheism. While still using Christ’s name, ministers, churches, and denominations discounted the authority of the Bible. They doubted the saving power of Jesus’ blood. It even became smart to deny Jesus’ deity. Many souls crashed spiritually from this spin. The denominations that embraced the heresy have declined rather steadily over the years. We evangelicals seemed to pull away from the error. Still, our spiritual horizon indicator hasn’t done so well.
I don’t know exactly what happened inside that gauge in my instructor’s airplane. I have a better idea of what is happening in the church. Our “gyro,” the Bible, remains reliable, but our connection to the Bible has become sluggish. The ecclesiastical forces and theological trends that help link the church to the Scriptures have loosened up. As a result, we still revere the Bible, but we really neither believe nor obey it.
Today, evangelicals hesitate to say that the Bible is without error. We reinterpret the Bible to conform its principles to our culture. We explain away and even ignore passages that give clear moral warnings when the sins involved happen to be popular. We cite our theological traditions to justify bending Scriptural principles. We get nervous at the suggestion that we take the Bible literally. We so saturate our minds with the values of worldly entertainment media and secular academia that we can’t really think Biblically.
As a student pilot, I wasn’t about to fly into weather in which that sluggish horizon indicator would have been necessary for safety. As Christians, however, we have always lived under conditions in which Scriptural guidance is necessary. How we’ll make out when our grip on God’s Word reaches the point that we can no longer follow it is a sobering question.
The airplane I learned to fly in had no caging knob on its horizon indicator, and it briefly lost some of its ability to navigate this big world safely and easily. What I’ve been pondering is the horizon indicator of my soul. Is my connection to the Book that stabilizes my flight through life really doing what it needs to, or have I plunged into life without protecting my spiritual gyro?
This essay is in the public domain and may be copied and distributed freely.
A Father's Faith * A Man for an Impossible Situation * A Mother's Triumph * All they Did Was Show Up for Work * Angels in the Sky * Dealing with the Evidence * Enforcing the Enforcer * Magic Vs. Miracle * Reclaiming a Failure * Taking Away the Stone * The Beginning * The Decision * The Devoted One * The End of the Boy King * The Flood * The Good Samaritan * The King and the King of Kings * The Making of a Traitor * The Man Who Sold His Rights * The Man Whose Eyes Were Opened * The Outcast * The Secret Agent * The Stranger * The Testing * The View from the Cave * The Weak Commando * Two Men, Two Scandals, Two Results * Where Is the God of Elijah?
Bridges to Burn * Come in Out of the Cold * Dropping Out * Dying Faith * Everything I Didn't Have * Failed Horizons * Failing for the Lord * Fire Danger * Living Water * Negligence * Spring or Rock Formation? * Stepping Toward God * The Beacon * Swimming with Piranhas * The Road Through the Swamp * Tracks in the Woods
Approximate diagram of an horizon indicator during level flight shown below.