A notification flashed across my iPhone this morning from a pastor's group I am a part of. The question that had been posed and was now sitting on my screen was how to address a "seeking" couple that was visiting the church but had questions about a particularly difficult cultural situation. In this case, the situation was "homosexuality", but it could have been anything. The pastor wanted to know what he should say and how he should address it.
A few thoughts went through my head as I considered what I would say to him if I responded. The first was, "what do you actually believe about the subject?" My guess is that my pastor friend already knew what he believed, or at least thought he knew what he believed, but when the question is actually posed by a real actual human rather than as a theoretical concept, stuff gets real.
I want to interject and interrupt myself for a moment, because I want to say that I did not read any further than the question, and I did not get an explanation or backstory or any details about what this particular pastor knew or didn't know or thought or didn't think. That said, there was something about the wording that made me think that this person perhaps hadn't through through what he actually believed when the rubber actually met the road; when his theology met his humanity. The word that struck me was the description of the inquisitors as "seekers".
I knew what he meant. "Seeker" is church lingo for someone who is seeking God in some fashion. They are typically "spiritual" but not "religious". They may have been raised in the church, see value in Christianity, but aren't entirely sure how to mesh what they think they believe with what they think the church believes. Often times a seeker has a particular question in mind; something that is their litmus test. For one man who visited our church, his question was predestination. He wanted to believe in God, but couldn't believe in a God who predestined people to Hell. He asked me what I thought on the way out of church, and I had to answer an incredibly complex question in just a couple of minutes with very little understanding of what was behind the question or where he was coming from. When you are talking to a "seeker", the tendency is to frame your response in a way that softens or mutes the difficult edges of your answer. We convince ourselves that the person isn't ready to hear the truth, or that the truth might offend them, and we wouldn't want that! We don't want to be the person who shoves them from "seeker" status back into "lost" territory. We better make sure that our answer is true, but not so true that it is offensive.
Oftentimes our responses in those scenarios end up being so ambiguous that they leave the person on the other end feeling like they got an answer, but not being totally sure what it was. I was watching an episode of Parks & Recreation the other day where the always-positive Chris played by Rob Lowe had recently broken up with Anne, one of the main characters. The problem was that the break-up was spun in such a positive way that Anne didn't realize that he had dumped her. I wonder how often my answers to these difficult questions so ambiguous or spun so positively that the person on the other end walks away thinking that I may have said something entirely different than what I intended.
What my pastor friend was really asking was, "How do I tell these people what God really believes about homosexuality without offending them and turning them away?" I think that's a legitimate question, but I don't think it matters whether or not the people are seekers, or whether they have been followers of Jesus their entire lives and are only just now having to figure out what God really thinks about this as it becomes a more common cultural question. Instead, I think that the real question that we have to ask ourselves is this: do you really love these people?
It strikes me that Jesus doesn't turn away from difficult questions, and he doesn't soften the blow of the truth that is in his response. Sometimes, people turned away because of it. Other times, they stuck with him. Here is the key: it was never their status (lost, seeker, found, whatever), and it was never their response (turning away or sticking) that guided his answer. It was always truth embedded and presented in love. When Jesus answered a question truthfully, he knew full well that he loved the person he was talking to. That's why he answered with such poignant truth. It was because he loved them.
I had to have a difficult conversation with someone once related to this topic. The first thing I did was ask the question: what does the Bible actually say? What do I actually believe? What does God actually think? This is what it means to love God, at least in part. It means that I actually care about what He thinks, and not just what I feel. But then, ultimately, the rubber meets the road and the theology of what God says meets the humanity and the emotion and the spirit of the person sitting right in front of you who has asked, "what does God think about this?" My pastor friend knew the right answer, but he wasn't sure that he knew the right response. My question would be, "do you really love them?"
When we really love the person we are responding to, to whatever degree our love can be totally genuine, that love will shine through in our response. I'm not telling you what God thinks about an issue to prove that I'm smart, or to prove that I can one-up you, or to belittle you or make you feel bad about yourself. I'm telling you what God thinks because I love you and He loves you and because He loves you and I love you I believe that there will be more joy in the truth of what God says than there will be if I just tell you what you want to hear, or if I couch my answer in such fluff that you leave without being entirely sure what God actually thinks. Love doesn't mean we always agree. Love doesn't mean that we always give the easy answer. Love means that we can give the honest answer, even when it hurts.
I said this to the Elders of our church a while back when we had one of these difficult questions come up and we had to respond, even though we knew that the reason the person was asking is because they were putting out their little litmus test to see if we believed in a God that they could believe in. I said, "if it is not difficult for us to respond, then we are not being Elders." Responses to difficult questions are not filled with pride; they are filled with love. It ought to matter to us when we give an answer to someone that we know might cause them to leave the church or leave the fold of God. Yet we know that it would hurt more, and be more harmful, to neglect what God said, or to answer ambiguously, just for the sake of harmony; just so that we don't rock the boat.
So yes, the question is, "what do you actually believe about the subject?" But then, before we respond, we need to ask ourselves, "do I really love this person like Jesus loves them?" If so, then we respond in truth, embedded and presented in love, not ambiguity.