The Value of Spiritual Milestones

Watch out for your great enemy, the devil.
He prowls around like a roaring lion,
looking for someone to devour.
Stand firm against him,
and be strong in your faith.
(1 Peter 5:8–9a)

Over the years, I have discovered three simple truths about erosion. Rather than occurring rapidly, erosion is always slow. Instead of drawing attention to itself, erosion is always silent. And in place of being obvious, erosion is always subtle.

The slow, silent, and subtle effects of erosion are not only a concern to us physically, but also an even greater concern spiritually. F. B. Meyer, British pastor of yesteryear, put it this way: “No man suddenly becomes base.” Spiritual erosion occurs, instead, by degrees. It can happen in individuals . . . and it can certainly happen in a church.

C. S. Lewis, in his cleverly written work The Screwtape Letters, wrote, “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”1

Two words from Lewis’s pen stand out: without milestones. For the church to awaken from its long drift, we need milestones. A milestone reveals one of two things: it can reveal how far we’ve come in accomplishment—and give cause for celebration—or it can expose how far we’ve drifted—and urge us to turn around. A milestone represents a point where we take an objective measurement. We stop, look back, and recall why we began the journey in the first place. We need to remember and restate our original objectives, then ask, “Are those goals still ours? Are we on target?”

We need places in our journey where we force ourselves to pause and evaluate whether or not a drift is taking place. Why? Because without milestones, we will drift. And like erosion, we will not see it occurring if we don’t look for it.

Endnote
1. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 61.