"a+b=b+a" however "If a then b ≠ If b then a"

    OK, I am the first to admit that I was awful at Algebra in High School. The day I discovered that I could substitute Geometry for Algebra was the day my hopes for passing math grades became realities instead of distant dreams. Even with my deep disdain for all things algebraic I have to admit that certain things just work better as equations. For example: while a narrative describing the joys of cross country driving over and against interstate driving might be entertaining you still need a good equation to tell you how long it will take to get to Pismo Beach, even if you do take a wrong turn in Albuquerque. With that said it rarely pops up in theological discussions, but maybe it should. 

    Yeats once wrote in his poem "The Second Coming" the following lines:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre, The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

    Those of us in church leadership in the old-line denominations certainly are feeling the sting of the words "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold" as we watch our denominations fall into ruins around us. We look at a world bereft of the leadership of the church and wonder if "mere anarchy" isn't just around the corner for Christians around the Western World. But what happened? How did our denominations, so strong for over 500 years, suddenly fall out of fashion, and fall so hard? I think it boils down to an equation, or more properly two equations: "a+b=b+a" however "If a then b ≠ If b then a" Let me explain. In Matthew 26 37-40 Jesus says,

"‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

    Here is the problem (OK, only part of a much greater problem) as I see it. At some point over the last 100 years we inverted these. They are propositional statements, that is to say "If a then b". You can't switch them around to say "Love your neighbor with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind.....and Love your God as you love yourself". When you do, I think, you get something that looks very much like standard liberal Protestantism in the Western World. You get a religion that asks second, what does God want, and asks first what will make my neighbor happy.

     Most conservatives (of which I am one) would like to lay a lot of the blame at the feet of the Social Gospel folks who have been pushing for faith-as-political-action over the last 50 years. In truth it's not the big blows from groups like this that are killing us, it's the tens of thousands of accommodations that the church has made for reasons only marginally related to the Gospel. A friend of mine calls it "death by a thousand paper-cuts"

    In math what you change in the equation can be the difference between the right answer and the wrong.  The same is true in theology.