Conservatives

Carefully obey all the commands I give you. Do not add to them or subtract from them (Deuteronomy 12:32).

You can be both a conservative and a Christian. A conservative is someone who believes "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it." Conservatives value tradition. Traditions help guide us in living successfully; they show us what has worked well for other people in the past, which offers us security as we try to figure out how to live for today. Traditions also give us roots; they connect us to our ancestors and a way of life that gives us identity in a world where things are constantly changing.

Political conservatives don’t like seeing the Constitution reinterpreted by the Supreme Court; they believe that our Founding Fathers wrote a document that doesn’t need to be stretched or flexed to meet the needs of modern society. Religious conservatives don’t like seeing the Bible reinterpreted by church leaders to accommodate modern trends in society; they believe that God’s word is unchanging truth, a rock of stability in a world where people want the freedom to do whatever they want without being criticized.

Conservatives are generally suspicious of change; they fear that hasty decisions will result in unfortunate precedents that can never be taken back. Conservatives find our modern world a frightening place in which to live, because things change so quickly these days.

Conservatives can often be in the right. In the Bible, God tells us that He does not change. In His Book, God warns us against adding any teachings of our own to His words, or concealing any of His words by being selective in what we teach. God does not want us trying to take His unchangeable truths and massaging them to become Politically Correct. It is not God who has to change to fit into our modern world; our sin-filled world needs to return to the unchanging One who gave it life.

And yet, conservatives can also be wrong. Jesus showed the religious leaders of His day that they did not understand God’s word correctly, but they would not even consider the possibility that their traditions might be in error. Jesus was labeled a dangerous radical and was relentless persecuted until the time came for His crucifixion. We who are conservative in today’s world must be careful to not let our loyalty to the past become an inflexibility that blinds us to God’s truth.