One beautiful Sabbath I walked the shores of Lake Michigan near our church’s flagship Andrews University. I soaked in the blueness of the clear sky, the slurping waves on the beach, and the stretched-out view of the shoreline. I decided to explore the shoreline and see how far I could get by walking. Thoughts of following Jesus on the lakeshore and poems about footprints in the sand came to my mind.
After about an hour I realized that I had been walking down a narrow pathway on the beach. But the object lesson was profound. One side was gritty, khaki-colored sand, made hot by the Sabbath sun. I had taken my sandals off, so though beautiful and firm to walk on, the scorching sand burned my bare feet.
The other side of the narrow way was the gentle yet ice-cold waves of Lake Michigan. The water was refreshing only after being burned by the hot sand. Relief was only temporary, however. After a couple of steps my feet went from one extreme of the Sahara to the other extreme of Siberia. Additionally, the wet sand was unstable. Each step caused my ankle muscles to recalibrate, causing me to slow down, stumble, or encounter some combination of the two.
The only recourse I had was a thin narrow strip of sand in between. It was slightly damp from the previous tide, but it wasn’t unstable. It was warmer than the lake, but cooler than the heated sand. As the philosopher Goldilocks remarked: “It was just right.”
Initially I wasn’t conscious of where the water was and where the sand was. I was walking. After my feet burned and froze, I was focused on following this narrow strip. I was not making a halfway-point calculation and trying to walk in an averaged-out zone. In some parts the hot sand was wide; in other parts the cold water was wide. Although there was much space on either side, I sought to walk only on this ribbon of stable footing and perfect temperature.
In academia, theories must walk between the simple and the complex. In the universe, planets must not be too close to their stars, nor too far away, to sustain life. In economics, markets must balance spending and saving. In politics, representatives must fight either for the collective or for the individual. In communication, a healthy tension exists between efficacy and efficiency.
In theology, we walk between various poles: justification and sanctification; grace and works; principle and compassion; people and ideas; humanity and divinity; the first coming and the second coming of Jesus; mercy and justice; ethics and spirituality; and many others.
The danger lies when we swing. We go from ice-cold feet in the water, and we want to get warm in the hot sand. While this provides temporary relief, we end up being burned and swinging back into the cold water. For example, some have swung to experience an extreme version of justification, only to be followed by an extreme version of sanctification. An exclusive experience in the former results in human passivity: since God has done everything, there’s really nothing left to the experience at all. An exclusive experience in the latter results in divine passivity: the onus is on human works to make things happen in the spiritual walk. This theological swinging results in people leaving the church because it is an untenable, unbiblical, and un-Christlike experience.
It’s much more profound than finding balance. It requires the wise, careful, and sensitive following of Jesus. As there were different sections of the lakeshore, different moments and stages of our lives require us to be spiritually deft while still being on that narrow strip of sand.
Master, save walking on water, teach me to walk on sand.