This is Why You are OFFENDING So Many Christians!

Patience and Gentleness in Christian Conversations

Maybe people feel attacked by you. Maybe people feel like you are sharpshooting them. And it's difficult, in spite of their good intentions, for them to respond well to what you're saying or to even hear you.

If you care about influencing other people, and if you care to win people over to sound doctrine and thoughtful Christian living, do it with patience and gentleness and warmth. Be winsome, and the Lord will use it.

And that does not mean that we're never direct. It does not mean that we don't ever say the strong, hard thing. But we gotta have more than one gear in our gearbox. We gotta have more than one tool. If the only tool you got's a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, and you can't go around just bludgeoning people to death and then blaming it on them because they don't respond well to you and the way that you communicate.

Often, it's not what you say that offends people. It's how you say it.

It is absolutely essential, if we're talking to other Christians, that we assume well of our brothers and sisters. We do not impugn motivations. I trust that you mean well, and that you want to honor God, that you want to think according to his word, that you want to believe sound doctrine, that you want to live a life that's good for your neighbor and honors the Lord.

Like, I assume all of those things about you, and that's going to very much inform my tone and my posture and how I engage. So often, people enter into conversations doing the exact opposite, like thinking really badly about their brothers and sisters whom they say they love in Christ.

It's like, well, you're coming in, like you said, this is a rock fight, and you're questioning everything about me and that there clearly is something sinister going on for me to believe such a thing.

Like, just don't approach the conversation like that.

Because it's going to go nowhere.

I was just so damaging to my wife and to friends around me when I first discovered Calvinism and Reformed theology, but the thing I was lacking was the very thing that I was called to demonstrate, which was patience, meekness, gentleness, open to reason.

What wins them over is patience. It is. It's the gentleness and patience of love that wins people over.

Speaking Winsomely About Christ

A question we should ask is, what is winsome in this whole thing? You know, the best thing that you can do is to say a lot of things about Jesus that they can't disagree with. And for a Christian, if you extol the mercies of Christ, herald the fact that He is sufficient and mighty and able to save, there ain't a Christian on the planet that's going to disagree with you.

That's right.

And so talk about that. Measure on Christ, say things about Him with which no Christian could disagree. Start there. And then just love them. Love your family. Love your friends. I think our tendency, though, like if I have a conversation with you about a matter, whether that's doctrinal, theological, or maybe it's more at the level of practice, like what you're doing, you need to immediately change and you need to immediately come around.

You need to immediately see it as I do, because clearly this is God's word. If we have that posture, we will be impossible to live with. What we need to be able to do is to engage people with gentleness and humility and respect, assuming well, and play that long game to where it's, I don't assume that you're gonna come around or see this the way I do right now.

I assume this is the first of any number of conversations we might have about this topic. And I want you to feel safe to have them with me. I want you to feel heard. I want us to be able to engage together and sharpen each other.

I mean, there are things I trust that I need to learn from you. All that would be under the umbrella of love, but it would also mean that you are willing to take some things that are said to you that might be unfair, that might be uncharitable, and you don't feel the need to immediately vindicate yourself, right, and justify yourself or respond in kind, but you're happy to just kind of swallow it.

That's what it looks like at a personal level often.

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. I've been able to have dialogues with people about very intense theological disagreements, and we've been able to make progress mostly because I actually just sat and listened.

Tell me what you think. I wanna give you the benefit of the doubt. I wanna let you be able to talk without you feeling like you're gonna be accused. This is how we grow. I mean, Justin, I can remember fighting Calvinism like it was a wild animal, and now I'm realizing the only reason I fought is I didn't understand it, and I didn't have anybody that was willing to absorb the blows with me.

I think I would've been converted much sooner if I had someone who has been gracious with me and just had time and been patient versus feeling like I was getting bludgeoned.

You might be pretty convinced God's word says otherwise. Okay, engage, but do it thoughtfully and well. It's like do not ever let your sense of urgency rob you of the ability to be patient and gentle and play the long game with people.

If you're on social media, be wise about how you engage in those platforms because it is not a place for nuance and thoughtfulness, generally speaking.

Speaking the Truth in Love

Remember that Jesus says that the truth is received when given with love. The two go together.

Amen, and if you're gonna spend capital on anything, spend it, burn it down on Christ and his sufficiency.

That's right.

Just start there. My goodness, don't start anywhere else.

Amen.