The Most Dangerous Game: Compromise

The Most Dangerous Game: Compromise

     There is a famous story by Richard Connell, published back in 1924. It's about a hunter who fills an island with prey to hunt...only his quarry isn't animals. It's humans. Killing other people, Connell's story says, is the most dangerous game.

    But is it really? Sure, Connell’s most dangerous game can destroy our physical bodies, but there are even more dangerous games that can destroy our souls and our relationship with Jesus.

     The five I’ll focus on in this devotional series are: comparison, conceit, complacency, compromise, and conformity.

Day 4: Compromise

    Let me start by saying this: I’m not decrying compromise as a whole. It’s a good skill to have in life: when you want A and someone else wants B, meeting in the middle is not only selfless but a good negotiating skill. 

     But there are some parts of life where compromise does not belong, and where God’s Word is concerned, we should never compromise. 

     When we play this dangerous game, we undermine Scripture.

    You can see it everywhere: people chipping away at the sanctity of Scripture. Believers try to “compromise” science with Scripture, allowing Evolution and other false doctrines to weaken God’s Word in an effort to “modernize” it. But God’s Word doesn’t need to be modernized! In fact, it is said that a famous scientist once declared, “A little science estranges a man from God; a lot of science brings him back.” (This is often attributed to either Francis Bacon, who invented the scientific method, or Louis Pasteur, who discovered pasteurization, and, in either case, both men were scientists who were Christians, so it is equally plausible.)

     People have also tried to “update” the Bible and take out passages they find antiquated. And, yes, while there are some passages that may be specifically meaning the tribe of Israel or understood in a cultural background—what God declares to be immoral should always be immoral. We do not see God changing His mind when He declares something to be sinful. In the New Testament, we see the New Covenant laid out for us: and God is very clear about what is a sin. 

     If we say that “this part of the Bible isn’t true,” or if we say, “God didn’t really mean this,” then what parts of the Bible are we left to believe? If we can “prove” that this part is false, how long is it until we can prove that everything is false? Why should I trust a God that is repeatedly wrong about what He says? If we cannot trust the Bible, then we cannot trust our faith, because in the Bible, it records that Jesus was killed on the Cross and resurrected on the third day. 

     This isn’t scientifically possible—our culture scorns the idea—so why is it any more or less “believable” than Creation or the sinful acts that Paul lists in 1 Corinthians? 

     It isn’t. So we cannot compromise on the inerrancy of the Scripture, or we compromise our faith as a whole. 

     When we play this dangerous game, we undermine the nature of God and make Him out to be a liar.

     This is an expansion of the previous thought. If we teach that the Bible has errors in it, if we try to modernize its thoughts, then how can we trust God at all? One of the core foundations of Christianity is believing that God is holy; how can someone holy be a liar? But that is what we do when we try and compromise the Gospel. We say: “God didn’t mean that” or “God doesn’t mean that anymore.” But the Bible says that all Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Which means that, if we are Christians, we believe that God had a hand in every single letter ever penned in the Bible. 

     Unless the Scripture isn’t actually God-breathed, and we disregard that. But if we disregard that…

     ...Where do we stop?

     Hebrews 13:8 tells us that Jesus (and therefore God) does not change. So if we say that what He declares to be a sin has changed, if we say that what He revealed in Genesis has changed, then we are saying that God has changed.

     And this is why complacency and compromise go hand in hand and are a dangerous duo. Because when we compromise, we are seeking to retain the status quo. We don’t wish to change or face the uncomfortable truths of the Gospel, so we edit out the hard parts. But 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 tells us that the Bible’s message will be construed as foolishness to the unsaved—but that doesn’t lessen its worth or mean that we need to make it “hip” or “wise.” Instead, once we delve into it, we realize how infinite God’s wisdom is and how we are the fools. Instead of trying to conform the Word to the world, we should instead build the character needed to conform the world to the Word. 

     We must stand on the solid rock that is God, and have the character to withstand the waves of the world that try and make us compromise our values (Matthew 7:24-29).

     How to win this dangerous game: replace compromise with character.

Bible verses:

(Genesis 1)

(1 Corinthians 6:9-20)

(Romans 3)

(2 Timothy 3:16-17)

(Hebrews 13:8)

(1 Corinthians 1:18-31)

(Matthew 7:24-29)