We know that we live in a culture where the gospel ‘feels’ increasingly counter cultural (I actually believe the culture is more biblical in its desires than it truly thinks but I’ll save that for another blog). This feeling can often leave those who follow Jesus struggling with how to navigate the different tensions that we face on a day to day basis.

How should we react and interact when we are faced with friends who are questioning their sexuality or gender, facing divorce, co-habiting, considering abortion……..etc? Whether they are follower of Jesus or not, it can be tricky to be who we feel we might be called to be in these moments.

We tend to see followers of Jesus reacting two different ways in these moments.

1 – They persecute the person – because they hold on so tightly to their theological beliefs around the topic they stop treating the person like a person and judge, condemn, shout etc. at them for their ‘poor moral behaviour’. This will have a mixed reaction from the person but it never has great long term results. Either it causes a rift and a damaging blow for the person, or they feel guilted into changing their opinion, not because they disagree but so they can keep the peace.

I understand the approach. It’s a seemingly zealous approach that is seeking to honour God deep in their heart. The problem is it misses a huge part of God’s heart. This approach, I believe, is deeply damaging for everyone. The second approach is just as bad.

2 – They persecute their theology – because they care for the person they are interacting with and can see how genuine their emotions are on the chosen topic, they feel the next logical step is to question the theology that they have grown up and chosen to believe. We start to say things like; “surely God wouldn’t want this person to feel like this?” “Maybe Scripture is a bit outdated on this subject” “They’re such a good person, what they are doing can’t be that bad, right?”

I understand the pressure. I’ve heard people in their pain accuse God and the church of so many horrible things and we have to be honest, as the church, we haven’t always dealt well when we have been faced with aspects of culture that don’t align with our theological beliefs (see point 1).

So, what do we do? Well, each situation is so different so I’m not proposing a blanket approach here but the quote below is one I’m refining around these topics.

“We must be tenacious with our theology but tender with our interactions”

The Bible speaks an eternal word, inspired by God. It isn’t mixed up and it isn’t changeable. Yes, there are many contextual things that we will wrestle with for years but what the word says is the word. The Spirit always points to Jesus and so I refuse to listen when someone tries to claim the spirit has shown them something that the scripture says the opposite of.

That means we take the Scripture seriously and that means that we will disagree with much of what we might be facing in the lives of the ones we love.

But, we have to also remember the tender, love and mercy of our Father. We see this displayed in human form through His son. When Jesus encountered those entangled in all sorts of practises that were not in line with His teachings He always dealt with grace and truth.

People who encountered Jesus in this way were often aware of their brokenness and He accepted and loved them in the moment. That doesn’t mean He coddled or condoned what they were doing but He never allowed that to cloud His vision of who they were created to be.

“The grace of God meets us where we are at, but His truth loves us too much to leave us where we are at“

Jesus never left people where He found them. The Samaritan woman, Peter, Thomas, the woman caught in adultery, Saul, Zacchaeus all encountered His mercy but were called to truth.

I believe we can show the same grace and truth (it might take a little practise though). When we are faced with moments where we don’t know how to react lets be tender with our interactions without loosening our theology. This may be misunderstood by many people on either side, but so was Jesus.

I’d rather be more like Jesus than understood