The Wrong Direction

A while back, I was helping a friend by driving her to the airport. After a women’s fellowship service, we prepared to travel to DC for her to catch her flight. When she told me which airport she was going to, she said “BWI”. I responded with “Okay, Dulles, right?” And she said “Yes. BWI”.

In my mind, I was 110% convinced those two things were the same. BWI was the abbreviation for Dulles.

As we drove, some comments were made. The travel time was about an hour longer than what she expected, but I thought that was just DC traffic. She asked me if the airport was in Maryland, and I said no, it was in Virginia, and she was a bit confused by that as well.

We drove along, dodged around some of the city drivers, and made it to the airport 2 hours before her flight was to leave. We had a joyful and thankful goodbye, and I sat at the curb and watched her walk into the airport. I debated waiting longer just in case she needed something, but cars were lining up behind me, so once she walked in the building, I drove away.

About 5 minutes down the road, she messaged me and said “I’m at the wrong airport. I need to be at BWI”, to which I had the same initial response in my head: “What do you mean? They’re the same thing”. And then my stomach dropped.

Maybe they weren’t the same thing.

I looked up the acronym for Dulles, which I thought was BWI, but it was not. IAD stands for Dulles (which makes a lot more sense than BWI!). I pulled over, prepared to turn around and pick her up to take her back the way we came towards Baltimore, but it would have been an additional hour, and she would have been cutting it close to make her flight. Fortunately, they were able to reroute her flight for an extra fee, but from there, she was able to make it home, despite my embarrassing mistake.

While we were in the car, we talked about a lot of theology, what God was teaching us, and things we were struggling with. Of course, in that conversation, one of the things we talked about was doubt in our faith. Wrestling with God and overcoming is a key characteristic of Christianity that is unique among other world religions. We are almost expected to doubt, and to question God and our beliefs, but with the goal of coming out stronger with a deeper understanding. This is not a fun thing to go through, and through this, sometimes we are exposed to false teaching and bad theology, but sometimes we have to learn the truths of God the hard way, because that’s how they stick.

That day, I learned a lesson the hard way: Dulles and BWI are NOT the same airport…

As I wallowed in a bit of self-pity, embarrassment, shame, and guilt for prolonging and complicating her trip home, I think I learned more than one lesson from this mistake that I can apply to my faith.

First of all, we are not always right. I was so sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I understood where she needed to go. But even in my assuredness, I was lead astray, and I lead her astray, too. There will be small signs along the way letting you know that you’re going the wrong direction, but if your pride keeps you from seeing them, you won’t stop to heed the warnings.

This can happen many times in our faith. Once we finally think we've got the Bible and faith figured out is when we are in the most danger. This attitude can make us susceptible to accept doctrine that is not Biblically sound, or worse, cause us to not want to seek deeper wisdom in Christ anymore.

Second, words don't always mean what we think they do. False teachings are hard to spot because often times, they will say all the right things, but in reality, they mean something totally different than their original meaning. I said the right words - BWI - but the destination in my head was WAY off from the actual destination. Sometimes this happens with explanations of the trinity, the bodily resurrection of Christ, and God's love. Sometimes people will affirm the Nicene creed, but the destination of these phrases is way off from the historical definitions.

Third, it's not the end of the world if you get off track. As scary as talk of false teachers and heresy can be, the grace of God still covers our pursuit of wisdom. We don't know what we don't know, and naturally, as we explore new parts of the Bible and new concepts of faith, we may find information that, upon further investigation, we find is false of problematic. You may end up at Dulles when you're headed for BWI, but God's grace allows us to transfer flight paths to get us back on track. The difference is He doesn't charge a fee. His grace is free, and if we accept faith in Jesus, His sacrifice, and God's righteous correction, He will always lead us into deeper relationship and further truth in Him.