“What the Old Man Does is Always Right” is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen which tells of a peasant who trades his horse down to a sack of rotten apples, justifying his trades all the way down.  If you can ignore the original moral it can be repurposed as a powerful parable illustrating the sins of attrition, those sins that slowly result in a drift away from a strong relationship with God.  We can justify our actions all we want, but if in the end we are left with a rotten relationship our eternal reward is at risk.   In an interesting twist, the man’s wife agrees with his actions all the way – showing that our drift can influence others away from God as well.  Really, what the old man does isn’t always right.  Read the full parable below.

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He was so proud of it.  The lines were right, the joints fitted, the wood finished to a glow.  The boat drafted better than any other and its beauty inspired use.  He could remember it now looking at the vessel before him.  Where had the beauty gone?  The years had worn it so slowly he hadn’t even noticed.  Now weathered, dull and leaking, the boat’s original beauty was only a faint remembrance…

Growing up in the church a lot of time was spent on two categories of sin, namely sins of commission, those things God tells us not to do but we do anyway, and sins of omission or those things God tells us to do but we ignore.  These are important categories but with a warning:  if we focus on a checklist of things we should and should not do, we by our nature grow to rely on OUR goodness and not on God’s.  Jesus clearly stated over and over that his disciples would become children of God and be consumed with a relationship with God through him.

Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Matthew 22:37(NIV)

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! John 3:1(NIV)

Over and over the Word of God explains Christians are about relationship not rules.  Our obedience (omitted and committed) is because we love God and value His presence in our lives.  We want to please Him.  Because of this, I believe there is a far more dangerous category of sin, attrition.  Attrition is any activity that causes a slow drift away from our relationship with God.  The dangerous thing is that it can take the form of just about anything, including religion.  Sometimes seemingly harmless activities over a lifetime (or less!) lead us to a point we are separated from God and don’t even recognize it until it’s too late.

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. Hebrews 2:1 (NIV)