Before a church can speak to the culture around it, it has to look honestly at itself. Jesus put it bluntly: “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5).
That is a hard word for church people, because it is easy to talk about everyone else. It is much harder to ask what in our own lives keeps people from meeting Jesus. But if the church is serious about honoring all people, that is where it has to start.
Clear Is Kind
Honoring people does not mean being vague. Author and researcher Brené Brown has a phrase for this: clear is kind. People deserve to know where a church stands, so that no one joins a community and is blindsided six months later by what it believes.
But clarity about convictions is only half of the picture. The other half is how we treat the people in front of us. A church can be correct and still be wrong in the way it carries its convictions. The goal is not to get everyone to think the same way. The goal is to get people to think.
The Kingdom Is the Point
The issue underneath all of this is the kingdom of God. Jesus said, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose” (Luke 4:43). Hebrews calls believers to be grateful “for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Hebrews 12:28).
The kingdom has always been for people who did not expect to be included. Paul describes Gentile believers as wild olive branches “grafted in” among the others (Romans 11:17). Part of the church’s mission is to bring in people who are not like us.
The Dividing Wall Jesus Tore Down
In Ephesians 2, Paul writes to two groups who had spent generations at odds: Jews and Gentiles, “the circumcision” and “the uncircumcision.” Then he says something remarkable. Jesus “has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:14), so that the two could become “one new man in place of the two, so making peace” (Ephesians 2:15).
Christians can rebuild what Jesus tore down. Paul says as much: “For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor” (Galatians 2:18). When that happens, people outside the church become convinced that Jesus must hate them, because the church is how they met Him.
The church’s job is not to build walls. It is to remove obstacles. Paul said, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). The New Living Translation puts it this way: “Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to save some” (NLT, 1 Corinthians 9:22).
Three habits, common in churches, rebuild the wall.
1. Undiagnosed Pride
Most people would not call it pride, which is why it goes undiagnosed. It sounds like “I’ve done enough,” “You’ve got enough,” or “I know the answers, and you just make excuses.” It is the quiet conviction that I have the truest handle on a situation and everyone else is wrong, often about situations I have never lived through.
Scripture is direct about this: “For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Galatians 6:3). For the person walking through a hard situation, it is their whole life. A few easy words from someone with no experience of it rarely help. If “just stop” worked, nobody would need church.
2. Willful Ignorance
Willful ignorance is the unwillingness to listen to another person explain why they see things differently. It keeps us in the dark and reinforces our pride.
There is absolute truth, and truth is truth. But many disagreements are not really about truth. They are about something we would understand better if we asked, and that understanding would make us more empathetic and more able to walk with people.
So ask questions. Pick up the phone. Sit down with someone different from you and say, “Help me understand.” Proverbs commends exactly this: “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out” (Proverbs 25:2), and “The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out” (Proverbs 20:5).
3. Immovable Expression
Immovable expression is the inability to keep an opinion to ourselves. Watch any local community group online and you will see neighbors tearing into strangers in the comments. Few people would turn around in a grocery store checkout line and start yelling at the person behind them over a campaign hat, yet that is what happens online every day. And no one walks away from those arguments thinking, “That was an insightful counterpoint.”
“It’s my page; I can post what I want” does not hold up for a Christian. “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Sharing an opinion is not a sin. But some things are not a question of sin or not sin. They are a question of whether we are representing the love of Jesus in a way that lets the gospel take root. A good question to ask before speaking: am I finding common ground, or rebuilding the dividing wall?
Learning to Human Well
Leaders sometimes have to take public stands. But church people have often been shown only how to take stands, so when they cannot take a big one, they take little ones everywhere: at the restaurant, at the store, in the comments. Then the only thing people outside the church ever encounter from Christians is a stand.
The alternative is to learn to “human well” with other humans. That means holding the truth of God’s Word in one hand and the love of the cross in the other. It means building common ground so that people outside the church can say, “I know where that church stands, but every time I deal with those people, they are kind, considerate and caring.” People should struggle to figure out how a church can hold its convictions and still treat them with such kindness.
It can be as simple as a word. Not every conversation at a store counter needs to settle every disagreement. “Could you help me, my friend?” is honest, kind and honoring.
Christians are more than their politics, their state or their nation. Every believer is an ambassador: “we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20).
God Humaned with the Humans
This is exactly how God brought redemption. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). God sent “his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3). We have a high priest “who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).
God never lowered His holy standard. He kept it, and He came near. If God the Son took on flesh to bring us home, His people can hold to the truth of Scripture and still draw near to the people around them. The Lord is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). When the church learns to honor all people, more of them will be grafted into the kingdom.