We’ve all heard it, but if you grew up in the evangelical church, you heard it a lot. It was a warning, an explanation as to why there could not possibly be compromise in particular matters of morality.
How about we try the following exercise, I’d love to hear from you. I’ll write a sentence that includes a couple of blanks. You fill in the blanks and post as a comment or note to me.
“We cannot allow _________ because that might lead to ________.”
This is the argument of slippery slope.
My Dad grew up Mennonite in southern Ontario. He was grateful for his upbringing and the religious heritage that it included, but he did not stay within the fold. He became Baptist and then Anglican and then more liberal Anglican, a kind of denominational slippery slope.
My Dad read a lot. Likely part of his religious slippery slope was that he read a number of writers who wrote from their own experience of growing up Mennonite. Among these authors were Miriam Toews, Rhoda Janzen and Rudy Wiebe.
My Dad was a super funny person. He had a fantastic sense of humour. He was not much of a “joke” guy, but he told me a slippery slope joke once that I assume is quite well known,
“Why don’t Mennonites have sex standing up?
Because it might lead to dancing.”
So, fill in the blanks, I’ll give a sample that I actually heard in the evangelical church.
“We cannot allow gay people (or as the speaker actually said “the gays”) to get married because then people will marry their dogs.”
I won’t go into theological detail here, but the slippery slope argument as part of a religious or theological understanding implies a particular view of God and people. This view can be described by the word “separation.” This argument says that God and humanity are separate, divided, and there is very little hope of overcoming this division. Only a very few people are “saved” from this separation. God is seen as apart from humanity and, therefore, particular moral and social distinctions must be maintained as some kind of attempt at holiness or righteousness. We would not want to slide down the slippery slope away from God.
Except.
Have you read Philippians chapter 2? Do you know the concept of the Incarnation?
There’s a lot to the concept and it is a central idea in Christian theology. The most important part of the Incarnation is that in Jesus, God became human. God was incarnated as flesh.
In my memorizing of scripture as a young Christian, I memorized a good portion of Philippians chapter 2. It is a beautiful passage of the Bible:
“Jesus, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. He emptied himself (let go of his divine identity as separate) taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death - even death on a cross.”
The passage goes on to say that this self-chosen humiliation became Jesus’ exaltation. In this, his name came to be above every name.
For those who were warned about “slippery slope” over and over again I present a question: Is there any more slippery slope than the one described in Philippians 2? The idea behind the warning is a kind of descent from a height to a depth. In Philippians 2 there is no higher height and no lower depth.
As I remarked to an evening church gathering recently, we could write a song:
“My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ’s slippery slopedness.”
Hopeful Christian theology articulates that God moves towards us, not away from us. God did not keep a distance. Thank God that God did not listen to the warnings about “slippery slope.” God’s holiness IS letting go of the heights. God’s holiness is breaking, not maintaining, the separation.
The passage in Philippians 2 starts with an injunction. Before describing what Jesus did, in becoming human, it says simply, “Have this same mind among you, that of Jesus Christ.”
In other words, we should be more aware of the hope of the slippery slope than we are of the dangers of it.