My son just started playing basketball. Playing may be overstating it. Five year old kids can’t really play basketball. They just don’t have the coordination and body control that is needed to play hoops. Basically it’s just a practice session where they try and learn the building blocks that might one day translate into basketball skills.

One thing I noticed right away is that coach isn’t concerned that the kids are traveling when he instructs them to dribble from one end of the court to the other. In fact he hasn’t once explained what traveling is. He is more concerned that they get the basics down first. Yet, to an experienced basketball player, traveling is pretty basic. Fact is, if he was concerned about the kids understanding and executing properly the concept of traveling at this point in their hoop journey, the journey would all be end. They simply are not ready for that reality yet.

I see this scenario played out in Christendom all the time:

Someone asks a Christian about their faith or about God and not three sentences in they start dropping info about the trinity or the virgin birth, or worse yet, details about their beliefs on eschatology.

At some point in one’s spiritual journey there comes a fork in the road. That fork is one of a series of concepts about the Christian faith that demand exclusivity from other paradigms, and they are important.

Why do we feel the need to rush people to that fork? Should we not first try to take them along a longer road that would prepare them to receive these truths? Should we try and go down a road built on common ground for as long as we can?