Backsliding


Backsliding, also known as falling away or committing apostasy, is a term used within Christianity to describe a process by which an individual who has converted to Christianity reverts to pre-conversion habits and/or lapses or falls into sin, when a person turns from God to pursue their own desire. To revert to sin or wrongdoing, especially in religious practice, someone who lapses into previous undesirable patterns of behavior. To be faithful, thus to believe backsliding is a reversion, in principle upholds the Apostle Paul’s condition in salvation: "If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9.
In Christianity, within denominations which teach Arminianism, such as the Methodist Churches, as well as in the Roman Catholic Church, backsliding is a state which any free-willed believer is capable of adopting. This belief is rejected by Calvinists endorsing the perseverance of the saints doctrine. In these denominations, it is taught that the backslidden individual is in danger of eventually going to Hell if he does not repent. Historically, backsliding was considered a trait of the Biblical Israel which would turn from the Abrahamic God to follow idols. In the New Testament church, the story of the Prodigal Son has become a representation of a backslider that repented.
Backsliding, or sometimes entropa, is also used by Buddhists and Zen practitioners, there is optimism in making ourselves resolved in following a way and in our practices; "Making a resolve, even if we fall down, generates its own merit which will bear fruit in our future success if we do not give up."