Thermometers and Thermostats

I was listening to a sermon the other day by a great Southern Baptist Itinerate Preacher, Vance Havner. In it he mentioned, in passing, that some people are Thermometers and others are Thermostats. This thought intrigued me and resonated with my experience.

We all appreciate the value of thermometers. In the winter, we watch weather broadcasts for the high and low temperatures and the potential cold fronts that might come through. And in the summer, we’re all very interested in thermometers, particularly in July and August. How hot will it be and how humid and how will it effect my vacation plans?

It is helpful for us to be like thermometers. In fact, when we aren’t aware of the prevailing spiritual/moral temperature in our family, church, society, it's easy for commitment to spiritual/religious truth and Biblical morality to slide down the slippery slope toward heresy and immorality. Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, in “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” refer to this phenomenon as allowing “Unthinkables to become thinkables”. That which we could not imagine happening in one generation becomes commonplace in the next.

But thermometers, as helpful as they are, only register the state of the environment outside or inside. They don’t change the environment they just report it.

Thermostats, however, serve another purpose. They change the environment. When it’s too cold, you turn it up. When it’s too hot, you turn it down.

Thermostats not only register the temperature in a room, they do something about it!

In the book of Galatians, Paul describes how he felt compelled to confront Peter with hypocrisy. Chapter 2, starting at verse 11 says…

"But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he had clearly done wrong. 2:12 Until certain people came from James, he had been eating with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he stopped doing this and separated himself because he was afraid of those who were pro-circumcision. 2:13 And the rest of the Jews also joined with him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray with them by their hypocrisy. 2:14 But when I saw that they were not behaving consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “If you, although you are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you try to force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

Peter had become merely a Thermometer, responding to the changing temperature of social acceptance. In one environment, he was warm toward the Gentiles. In another environment he was cold. Whatever the changing wind brought, Peter reported.

Paul saw the hypocrisy of such behavior and challenged it. He chose to make a difference. He chose to do something about it. I have no doubt that Peter responded appropriately to this correction.

But this situation demonstrates how easily each of us can become thermometers, and nothing more.

Let’s guard our steps and trust our God when we need courage to stand for what is right at home, at work, at church, and in the community.