I decided to take some time off from blogging because, among other things, I was getting overwhelmed with the lopsided amount of criticism I found in the Christian blogosphere. It wasn’t just what was being said, but how. Some people seem to find it almost exhilarating to run down the church.

Part of me doesn’t understand this and part of me shrinks from the boldness, even recklessness, with which some tear apart what the Scripture describes as the bride of Christ. I don’t know about you, but when you look at it in light of that relationship, I’d be a little careful about what I say about someone who belongs to someone else.

I don’t want to lean too heavily on that analogy, however, because criticism is needed and helpful. In fact, you can sometimes see it as a prerequisite for authentic Christianity. If the salt has lost its saltiness, you have to say so. After all, salt that is no longer salty is “no longer good for anything.”

When I first started in construction I helped on a job where we had to install several casement windows on a screened-in porch. The house was built into a hillside, so the concrete block foundation was tall enough to walk around under the porch without hunching over. And there were a couple of prominent stairstep-type cracks in one wall.

Naïvely, I thought this involved just a cosmetic repair like digging out the crumbling mortar and filling it with new. Done. But the crack was just a symptom of a bigger problem, so we actually tore down the entire wall, right down to the footer. Then we built a new, sound wall in its place. After all, we had hundreds of dollars’ worth of windows to install on top.

This is the way criticism has to be sometimes. You can’t just pretend that serious problems don’t exist. You have to address them, and that can mean challenging bedrock assumptions or cherished ideas (aka “sacred cows”). Taking it down to the foundation, so to speak.

But at that point you have to check both your motives and your intentions. Do you see yourself as a victim and essentially not a part of what you’re criticizing? Then it’s likely that your criticism will take a different form from someone who has an interest, even an investment, in the group (e.g., a pastor or elder).

To go back to the house/ foundation analogy, what happens if you just knock the old wall down? You can’t just leave a house with one-quarter of its foundation missing. You have to replace it with something, even if it means just bracing it while the new construction is proceeding.

This is closer to what a pastor or elder thinks of the “spiritual house” he oversees. His concern is to build, not just destroy, though limited demolition may be needed. That’s not to say that pastors or ministers don’t go around blowing holes in the sides of others’ houses to promote their own, but that’s another subject for another post.

One of my favorite histories is Freedom at Midnight, the account of the last British Viceroy (Lord Mountbatten) and the various Indian players involved in the struggle for India’s independence from the British Empire.

One incident in particular stands out for the way it illustrates the difference between criticism and building up. About the time the government was handed over to the new Indian officials, several crises broke out that needed immediate attention. Because the new administration was barely established, they found it too much to handle so quickly and they went to Lord Mountbatten discreetly to ask for help. (That must have been difficult and humbling, but thank goodness they did. People were being killed in sectarian violence.)

Basically they said, “We’re agitators, not administrators.” It’s one thing to criticize from the outside, it’s another to govern from the inside. My guess is that every non-incumbent candidate who gets elected to office experiences some form of this transitional shock. But the point is that agitators and administrators have different perspectives.

When an administrator looks at a problem she sees what she’s responsible for. She owns the problem and the solution. A critic usually doesn’t. Because the church is divided the way it is, a lot of critics don’t think much about the damage they cause because it affects something separate from them. Or at least that’s the way they perceive it.

But I think this is a mistake. “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit …”

Given the resilience of our relationships with God because of his grace and mercy, that tells me we’re probably not as separate from each other as we think. The person/ group/ denomination/ opposing camp you’re criticizing might be the “living stone” right beside you, and the two of you (with many others) are “being built into a spiritual house.”

There are many reasons. For example, I’m sure that if I read one more I am not/ no longer/ never really felt comfortable being an evangelical post I’m probably going to be sick, and then I won’t be able to use my computer for anything, even Solitaire or Minesweeper. I’m half-joking here, but part of my problem is the prevalence of criticism without credible alternatives (i.e., edification) in the blogosphere.

Please note: I won’t be moderating or responding to comments during this break.

John says parenthetically that the Pharisees “were using this question [i.e., about what to do with the woman] as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.” The woman herself seems secondary, and the whole scenario seems more about them and preserving their standing than anything to do with her spiritual welfare.

And then Jesus does something strange. He bends down and writes on the ground rather than immediately answer their direct question. I’m open to other interpretations, but this seems to be about assigning a higher value to preserving the woman’s dignity than respecting the religious leaders’ reputations.

He’s simply diverting attention from someone who’s been caught in the act and now dragged into the middle of a public discussion. “They [the leaders] made her stand before the group.” She was ashamed and they couldn’t care less. They had bigger fish to fry.

On another occasion Jesus said of these religious leaders, “Everything they do is done for men to see.” I think this incident demonstrates that he meant everything. For their own sake, they wanted to make a big deal of this.

This is the essence of man-centered “ministry.” There’s something about the way some people minister or just discuss their faith that reveals it’s more about them and being seen in a certain light. Done for men to see, you could say.

It has to visibly affect people, producing guilt or embarrassment. It has to demonstrate their own bona fides, so everyone knows how uncompromising they are. It doesn’t matter if it manufactures stereotypes or turns people into insulting caricatures, so long as it reflects favorably on their own image.

All of this has little or nothing to do with real ministry. If anyone is persuaded it is usually superficial and/ or temporary. It actually produces more resentment than anything else because it robs individuals of the freedom to love God rather than just respond out of embarrassment or condemnation.

To return to the woman and the Pharisees, no one was questioning her guilt, including Jesus. But the leaders’ indifference to her shame shows they’re more interested in the power they wield than the power of redemption.

Listen to the sensitivity of Paul as he writes to the Corinthians: “Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while—yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance.

“For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”

Jesus saw straight into the woman’s heart and knew that her sorrow was enough. So he actually stepped between her and her accusers by bending down and writing on the ground. He shielded her from condemnation, the kind of sorrow that actually harms rather than promotes healing.

He was satisfied that she was contrite. It was enough for him. And this is the essence of Spirit-led ministry: The Spirit of God who has been assigned to “convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment” knows when it’s enough. And it’s enough when he’s brought us to the foot of the cross so that we can choose.

No one should think that I’m saying the Spirit’s ministry is weak. “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’” That was the day the church was born in power. But power of a different sort than that produced by “rules taught by men.”

Like good public preaching I happen to think that blogging can be a very effective and efficient way to reach a large number of people. In the case of blogging, of course, you don’t even have to find a venue large enough to accommodate your audience. They come to you.

Blogging can be like preaching when it follows the pattern Paul described to the Corinthians: “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.” (1 Cor 2:13)

A lot of bad blogging relies on anger, invective, heavy use of ridicule or sarcasm and ad hominem attacks. Because there are generally no consequences in the blogosphere for losing your temper, losing your patience or posting a gratuitously blunt or harsh remark, people feel like they’re free to release their innermost feelings.

And more than that, they seem to feel there’s a kind of power in doing that, as if the no-holds-barred environment helps to expose concealed sin and uproot stubbornly held attitudes. And this is where they go wrong, in practice denying what James said, “Man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires” (Jas 1:20) But what does?

One of the first things I learned more than 20 years ago, when I started teaching in the church, is that public ministry is a collaboration with the Holy Spirit, not a product of human wisdom (“not in words taught … by human wisdom”) and clever persuasion. “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power,” Paul wrote.

And this is the second element of misunderstanding, the phrase “the Spirit’s power.” “The Spirit’s power” works on the human heart from the inside out. Man’s power (often employing some form of “man’s anger,” cf. the verse from James, above) shames, embarrasses, condemns, browbeats into submission and otherwise manipulates by using guilt and fear.

I’ve often thought of this like trying to submerge a beachball in a swimming pool by lying on top of it. As long as you keep heavy enough pressure on it, you can force it beneath the surface. Let off the pressure and it pops back up, because you have done nothing to its buoyant nature except temporarily suppress it.

Is it any wonder that so many heavily churched adolescents and young adults run from the church at the first opportunity? This relentless application of external pressure is the furthest thing possible from “the Spirit’s power.” In fact, it tends to produce a pretty big reservoir of resentment and pushback.

It certainly produces little real love for God, which is the core of our faith: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.”

The first rule of both good blogging as well as good preaching, then, is to respect the sovereign role of the Holy Spirit in producing a truly changed heart. This means a conscious reliance on his power and repudiating all forms of manipulation and heavy-handed use of guilt.

Again, to the Corinthians, Paul wrote: “We have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” (2 Cor 4:2)

(to be continued)

I was either naïve or way too optimistic (or both). When I dropped out a couple of years ago, I hardly noticed the difference. I know that’s not too flattering for some people who’ve worked hard and spent a considerable amount of time building up their blog’s following, but I have to be honest.

Part of the reason for that is very simple. “I did not send these prophets, yet they have run with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied.” (Jer 23:21) A blog and an Internet connection do not a ministry make, and many people need a lot more time on the vine for the fruit of righteousness to ripen in their lives.

But part of it is the nature of the online community itself, which I think is a community in only a superficial sense. If I’ve learned anything in the past 35 years it is that the kingdom of God is built through flesh-and-blood relationships, not virtual ones.

“It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph 4:11-13)

Twenty centuries of church history and ever-changing technology haven’t changed that, because our growth as individual disciples and as members of the body of Christ depend on knowing and being known, loving and being loved, saying “No” and hearing “No.”

In the blogosphere, I am no one’s pastor (or elder) and no one is mine. Yes, we are to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21), but that’s often a pretty tenuous proposition in the real church, to say nothing of a virtual environment.

To put it plainly, I am the commander of my desktop, the master of everything I see and hear online. If you get under my skin I can hit the Back button, block you from commenting or e-mailing or just avoid you altogether since it takes clicking on or typing in your URL to let you into my world, which is displayed on something smaller than a piece of copy paper.

(When you stop and think about how much you avoid, block or shut out, maybe it really is a small world after all …)

Like using cell phones or cooking dinner in the microwave, communicating online has become such a fixture in our lives that it’s hard to distinguish how it’s different from the “old-fashioned ways” of relating to one another.

But one way to think about it is to imagine a marriage or raising children conducted only through texting, e-mailing, Facebook updates, tweets or blog posts. Isn’t there something communicated through the warmth of an embrace or literally wiping away someone’s tears? Did you ever resent correction from your parents and later realize their “harsh” words were like a guard rail along the edge of a precipice you never even saw?

But online you simply can’t do the former, and you would probably Delete the latter. That’s what a virtual relationship is, incomplete and ultimately inadequate. “Iron sharpens iron,” but only when they come in contact with each other.

In the real world, you work next to the person that bothers you, day after day. Until, when the Lord has completed the work he is doing in you through that human irritant, he separates you. They may change or you may never see them again. Both aspects are governed by him.

“When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually? Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil? When he has leveled the surface, does he not sow caraway and scatter cummin?” “(Isa 28:24-25). You can’t bear fruit without plowing first, but the Lord does not “plow continually.” What would be the point in that?

The virtual world is the world you control, hermetically sealed from the providence of God when it takes the form of the “great fish” he “provided”—the actual word in the text—to swallow Jonah. To get to a life under his lordship we have to lose the life under ours. It’s not always easy, but it’s always worth it.

And then, just like the Christmas decorations right after Thanksgiving, out of the blogosphere came the proof-texts, the hand-wringing, the spasms of doubt about “rejoicing” over the death of the world’s most wanted terrorist. It was probably inevitable.

When we’ve calmed down and can think clearly, I don’t think anyone who believes in a day of reckoning, “meeting their Maker” or the judgment of God, doesn’t pause and think soberly just for a moment that is “a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Even for the ruthless bin-Laden. And I don’t mind the occasional admission that someone feels uncomfortable about an evil person’s death.

But there’s something about the wooden, literal way someone quotes Scripture to me (e.g., “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked”) that makes me feel I’m being scolded like an 8-year-old child. Do people realize how patronizing this is?

I’ve been in the church long enough that I’ve seen this ritual observed more times than I can remember. You’re in a meeting, a small group discussion or Bible study group, and various people are offering their candid opinions and feelings until someone intones, “Yes, but the Bible says …”, whereupon everyone freezes, clams up and looks at their feet in shame.

Then there’s the obligatory admission of guilt, accompanied by solemn nods and muttered confessions. That’s right. Yep. “There is none righteous, no not one.”

I don’t believe that the Christians who’ve stepped in to supply “a biblical perspective” are trying to defend bin-Laden or whitewash the evil he promoted. But for the most part they reveal a side of Christianity that our nonbelieving neighbors, relatives and acquaintances both see and disdain: how childish and immature we can be. (I don’t blame them for thinking this, btw.)

We just can’t break out of the kind of dollhouse world where we play-act from a memorized script that we dutifully wrote down and highlighted every Sunday and Wednesday night for as long as we can remember. We learn by rote but we’ve hardly learned to live by faith. Because of that many of us have never grown up and learned to think like adults in the faith.

The truth is, I really don’t need to think about the way I think about bin-Laden’s death. When the Lord says, “It is mine to avenge,” can’t we just leave it at that and go on living our lives? If it’s his to avenge then why is it mine to agonize over?

Instead of trying to choreograph our reactions, can’t the busybodies among us just admit, like Tom Clancy’s character Jack Ryan, that “it’s above my pay grade”? I think so.

One day about three years ago, when the corrosive atmosphere of the Christian blogosphere was really getting to me, I shut down the computer and went looking for a book to read. For relief, really. What I found, by divine appointment I’m sure, surprised me.

I pulled out a slim paperback collection of the writings of Jonathan Edwards and there he was on the cover, in the quintessentially grim Puritan pose, looking like he had just taken an emetic but before it took effect.

Even non-religious people know, if only because they took a college survey course in American literature, that this is the man who wrote something about an angry God dangling sinners over the pit of hell like a spider at the end of a gossamer web (or something to that effect).

But as I started reading—and I opened the book to a random page—I found probably the most generous spirit I had read in months. He was broad-minded and careful not to judge prematurely. He wasn’t partisan, but willing to criticize great men for their faults rather than fall into the sin of favoritism. He was uncompromising. He was merciful.

His 250-year-old writings showed me, the modern sophisticate (ha!), literally that you can’t judge a book by its cover. (I had to look at the cover a second time to be sure that this really was Jonathan Edwards.) And I began to see more clearly that agreement and unity—obviously in short supply in the blogosphere—have little to do with what I thought they did.

I became a Christian as a 19-year-old college freshman, and for about half of the past 35 years I was on a Holy Grail quest for the perfect expression of what the church should be. I had some good intentions, I guess, but it sent me down the road of endlessly refined legalism that leads us to carp and nitpick and criticize each other to death.

I had some vague idea that finding this purer, uncompromising manifestation of biblical truth would make it like the prophetically announced “mountain of the Lord”: “Many peoples will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.’”

Agreement and unity would then come about when this “mountain” was restored and people streamed to it. Or so I thought.

Problem is, there are thousands of people with the same impulse but who have different ideas about how to define this purer, uncompromising expression of biblical truth. And armed as they sometimes are with a fierce righteousness, they fight each other like two cats in a bag.

The second problem is that we aren’t going to solve this problem by being cynical about concepts like “sound doctrine” or implying that “certainty” is suspect, if not the actual enemy of unity and civility.

These approaches never make a truly clean break with the kind of legalism that we say we loathe. They only tamper with the formula, maybe watering it down here or there so that nothing is too strong for anyone’s taste. This is just a variation on the mistake I made for so many years.

The problem with being right, no matter how you define right, is that believing and upholding what is biblically right is not the same as being righteous before God. We all know there is none righteous, no not one, until we get it into a discussion, which then escalates into an argument, with someone where the goal shifts to coming out on top.

To be right, in other words, takes precedence over our righteousness before God, which is built on an entirely different foundation. Because of his mercy, we are acceptable to him. Not because we’re right.

Before I sat down to write this, I tried to think about what practical difference this mercy makes in the way I relate to persons I have problems with. It makes all the difference.

There are people I know whose theological pronouncements have left me literally speechless. If someone turned it into a cartoon my jaw would drop and you’d hear the sound of a hammer on an anvil. There are others who know and confess the truth and their lives are so out of synch with it I almost ache to grab them by the lapels and shake them back to reality.

My natural inclination to be repelled by them, almost like forcing together two like poles of a magnet, is tempered by mercy. Because of mercy I can look past what repels me (and it truly does, btw) and still walk with them.

I hope you take me at my word and understand that in no way am I willing to adulterate the biblical requirements of obedience and holiness. But because of mercy I can’t write these people off. Love “always hopes, always perseveres.”

It really changes everything, this being merciful as God is merciful. You’re relieved of the burden of always trying to be right. And the inversion of that, the sense of obligation that you have to inject a measure of self-doubt into everything you say lest you sound too dogmatic.

Sin separates, one of my pastors used to say. But mercy is a bridge to the other side, no matter who’s right.

* * * * *
At Rachel Held Evans’ blog, Rally to Restore Unity

When we read the Psalms, to take one example, we hear the psalmists crying out to God in ways that we rarely do. That’s because they find themselves in situations we can only imagine, the closest thing in our experience being some scene in a movie or television show. Help me. Deliver me. Come to my aid or I will surely die.

Some of the contrast between then and now has to do with the way we’ve mastered our environment (“subdue it,” though that phrase is falling out of favor). Scientific inquiry and technology have taken some of the mystery out of creation and its effects on us. We don’t look on it with the same fears that made superstition so common to the prescientific mind.

But not entirely. I’m thinking, for example, of the recent spate of tornados that have cut through the southeastern US. As reporters talked to survivors, often standing directly in front of a pile of rubble that was once their neighborhood, you could hear the tension, the relief and the thankfulness in their voices. All indicators that they had just endured something much bigger than they could handle.

Apart from these exceptional circumstances, faith can atrophy to the point that, well, it doesn’t really look like faith anymore. It’s just belief in a few essential doctrines, staying away from a few “serious” sins and keeping your head down until the Lord takes us home.

But “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Most Christians will acknowledge this, but what makes some of them uncomfortable are all the examples of faith that follow this verse in Heb 11 (the “faith” chapter).

It makes them uncomfortable because from Noah to Abraham to all the unnamed heroes of the faith, these people did something. “These were all commended for their faith,” but it was an active trust and dependence on God. Or as James put it, “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.”

More than 20 years ago, when I was part of a church plant in upstate New York, as a small but growing congregation we had the opportunity to move out of our dingy but adequate rented space and into a larger, more visible building. But taking possession of the new building meant doing some substantial repairs at a cost over and above what our weekly offerings would cover.

At the time, my wife and I were getting by, but we didn’t have extra money in the bank to contribute to this special offering. But my wife pointed out that when God called his people to do something, he asked them to give what they had (e.g., five loaves, two fish).

I looked around and saw an oak sideboard that I had purchased when we were first married. It was dirty and ugly when I bought it, but I had refinished it and it was now beautiful, one of the first nice pieces of furniture we owned. I realized I could sell it for around $200 and give the proceeds to the building repair fund.

There was a twinge of regret about this, though, because of its sentimental value. And it was a nice piece of furniture which stood out from the other, um, stuff we owned. But the following evening, after I picked up my wife from work, I decided I would call it in to a local “swap mart” evening radio show.

As she came out of the store, I saw she was holding an envelope. The pastor had stopped during the day, she said, and given her this, an anonymous gift from someone else in the church. Inside was $200.

I thought of Abraham’s answer to Isaac when his son asked him where the sacrifice was. “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And then Abraham later looking up to see a lamb caught in a thicket, the sacrifice.

This is faith. Or, more accurately, “the obedience that comes from faith” (Rom 1:5). And in some measure, to please God, you gotta have it.

Nearly 30 years ago, when I was just beginning to understand how much I had put my light under a bowl, to remedy that the Lord brought me time and again into situations where he gave me discernment to apply his word and speak plainly and directly to family, people I knew and people I did business with.

And things happened. Attitudes changed. Sin was exposed. Dishonest people got caught. People who had lied their way through life found it no longer worked. This gave me a lot of needed confidence and reinforced the idea that the Lord was righteous and just and still intervened in the world in tangible ways.

But over the past ten years or so, things have changed. The discernment is still there, but it’s as if my tongue is tied and God has gone on vacation.

The same types of situations that once warranted action just go on and on unchanged. Even when I try to address the ones that affect me the most personally—and those opportunities are few and far between—it’s as if I’m speaking a foreign language. There is no recognition, let alone a response or change.

Looking back, I realize now that in the earlier instances God ordered my steps to coincide with situations ripe for action. I came in at the tail end. My faith was too tender and immature to endure long dealings with people who had hardened themselves against the Lord.

For someone else before me, the situations had gone on and on unchanged, and then the Lord had taken me and used me like a scythe to cut down something ripe for harvest. The scythe is just rusting in the shed now with all the other old tools.

Of course there’s no inconsistency here. “God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day.” But also this: “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” So patient that most of us, at one time or another, think he’s too patient and too slow to anger.

And this is the facet of grace that gets forgotten. Grace is wonderful to the sinner who eventually finds it because it’s free. But to the bystanders who continue to experience the collateral damage from his not-yet-repented-of sin, grace is costly.

Every day, every week, every month that goes by can mean someone bears the cost of someone else who casually, and even recklessly, “shows contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads [them] toward repentance.” Every day of grace to the unrepentant means another day of not having to deal with it. (Whew!)

I’ll spare you the full inventory, but for the sake of illustration, over the past ten years I have missed the opportunity to complete a seminary education and put it to use, missed college and high school graduations, and missed out on having a family because of someone’s unfaithfulness to God, someone whom God saved from the wreck of her own personal life three decades ago.

I live beside a man who doesn’t work because he’s gamed the system for years. While he drives a nice car and grills bacon-wrapped delmonico steaks on the grill right under my nose, I can’t pay my bills on time and I am sinking deeper into debt.

These people treat grace like water. They’re worse than the servant in the parable of the talents who took his one talent and buried it. (A talent was worth about 20 years’ wages, so no wonder the master was angry. The servant wasted his money, which represents “the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience.”)

I’m trying to think of an upbeat way to end this, but maybe there isn’t one. Judy Collins singing “Both Sides Now”? I treated the grace of God lightly for a long time. At various times, I’ve done it since becoming a Christian too.

In a small way, far short of the excruciating pain and physical suffering borne by Jesus, many of us have entered “the fellowship of sharing his sufferings.”"The insults of those who insult you fall on me.” Grace is free but grace is costly, and you can’t understand one without the other.

But is it just a word that is suffering from overuse—feisty, horrific, like, awesome are other words that come to mind—or is it a reflection of defective thinking?

What does nuanced mean anyway? Does it just mean sound exegesis and application, taking into account context, literary form, social and cultural background, dovetailing with the known character of God, consistent with other Scripture?

Does it mean free of hidebound, idiosyncratic, learned-by-rote interpretations? If it does, then let’s get nuanced.

Or does it mean complex, as in the typical fallback position It’s not that simple, it’s more complex. Approximate translation: I don’t agree with the proposition you’re making but I don’t have a legitimate counterargument so I’ll imply your argument is simplistic.

If it means this then what we’re dealing with is a matter of the will, not one of understanding, as the word deceptively implies.

The most confused Christians I’ve ever met, the ones with the most elaborate (i.e., nuanced) rationalizations about their moribund faith, are the ones who know the will of God but won’t do it.

You could sum up the fundamental problem I have with an approach that consists of making ever finer, lawyerly distinctions about God’s word by reading Psalm 119:130: “The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.”

There is a growing amount of discussion challenging traditional evangelical faith that is getting murkier and cloudier and somehow seems to value that as a virtue. My problem is not that it challenges tradition per se. My problem is that it’s not clear.

It’s the worst form of intellectual vanity to think that if something is hard to understand it is intellectually superior. If the unfolding of God’s word gives light, why can’t I see anything by the light of these nuanced explanations?

But before anyone thinks I want to reduce the faith to bumpersticker aphorisms, remember that Paul said “We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature” and “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.”

The reason even “the simple” understand the deep truths of the faith is because they are expressed “in words taught by the Spirit.” I’m a well-educated person, and the “words taught by the nuanced” often leave me wondering what they’ve just said.

No matter who we are, we learn by revelation, and that’s a completely different path from the one that tends toward gems like this: “It depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.”

Revelation means a revealing, an uncovering. Not obscuring. “Must my flock feed on what you have trampled and drink what you have muddied with your feet?” I don’t think so.