A Compass and a Weathervane

I live in the same town where I grew up. When I was young, I could tell you which way was north anywhere in town and still can. But I was surprised, years later, to find out that ended pretty much at the edge of town. The neighboring towns that I thought were west and east of us are actually almost north and south. The road heads off to the west and east then gradually curves. Before long you’re going a direction you didn’t expect. I only realized this years later when looking at a map.

Turns out it’s not just roads. People who hike off trails tend to go in circles. They think they’re going straight, but their path slowly veers to one side. But there’s a bit of ancient knowledge that can solve this problem. A compass has exactly one purpose: To point to the north. With this seemingly magical device, you can tell when roads (or your feet) curve. As long as you can tell where true north is, you can travel in a straight line.

There’s another bit of ancient technology that could be confused for a compass: the weathervane. It looks like it could point to the north, but what it really does is tell you which way the wind is blowing.

Sailors combine these two. The compass tells them which way they want to go; the weathervane tells them which way the wind is going. With that knowledge they know how to rig their sails to reach their destination.

It would be a possibly deadly mistake for a sailor to simply assume the wind is blowing the right direction. The wind can turn this way and that and never actually blow them where they need to go. They need to know where they’re going, and they also need to know how the wind is blowing.

“Where’s he going with this?” Don’t worry, I’m coming to the point now.

We are adrift on the sea of our culture. What is our compass? The word of God. It defines our truth north. It shows us the way home.

But the winds are blowing. And they shift this way and that. We have to pay attention to them as we navigate these waters. Many Christians criticize those who pay attention to the culture, who watch how the winds change. Don’t. We need those people.

There are certainly those who get so distracted watching the winds that they never check the compass. We shouldn’t fall into that. But we don’t want to just watch the compass spin, either. If we keep one eye on the needle and the other on the winds, we can trim our sails to keep our course true.

The gospel doesn’t change, but how we present it to our culture can. The truth doesn’t change, but the questions people ask about it do. We need to value and listen to the people who watch the compass and the weathervane and tell us how to set our sails.

By combining these tools, when we reach home, we may be able to take some people there with us.


If you’d like to hear from some people who have one eye on the compass and the other on the wind, consider:
A New Kind of Apologist: *Adopting Fresh Strategies *Addressing the Latest Issues *Engaging the Culture by Sean McDowell (ed)

Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel by Russell Moore

A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today's World by John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle

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