Christians are constantly admonished by both fellow Christians and non-Christians for compromising on what should not be compromised and not compromising when we should. Whether the accusations are valid or not, it does raise the questions about how we decide on where we should be flexible.
Right and Wrong
There are some things that we cannot compromise; the Bible, being God’s Word to guide us through the darkness for one. These are things such as the exclusiveness of Christ as the only way to the Father, the incarnate deity of Jesus and justification by faith only. Some people may not have thought about these issues and so we must be patient, but if they have thought them through and rejected them, we must stand and boldly proclaim these people to be in error.
Open to differences
Some things are open for Christians to have differing views. Not everyone will agree but I think issues such as attitudes to baptism and church government fall into this category.
Time to change
There is yet another category that I think we do not always recognize. It is the category of needing time to change. By this category I mean that people may have erroneous understandings but change in thinking takes time and so we need to give them the space and time to think it through, even if wrong.
The example that springs to my mind is the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. It is clear from Scripture, that God controls everything, but the ramifications of this often take time to filter through in thinking and the action that follows the thinking. I recall spending half an hour with a person explaining the sovereignty of God and then being annoyed that they didn’t ‘get it’. I forgot that I had been working on the issue for well over a decade!
At the time of the Reformation, the great crafter of the Anglican Prayer Book, Thomas Cranmer understood this and applied it to his liturgy. He was working to change the way Christians thought about relationship with and approach to God from the Roman Catholic understanding to a Biblical and Evangelical Faith. His policy in structuring his services was to have balance. He sought to allow congregation members to have familiarity with what they knew before while clearly teaching the truths of the gospel. This meant that some things which were suspect were permitted to continue until the congregation was better trained, and then he would make further changes.
This idea of balance is very helpful in ministry. So often I have seen people reject everything being said (often which is true) because they were not given time to change or there was such a complete overhaul of thought or practice that total acceptance or total rejection as forced upon them.
Some years ago I saw a friend of mine do balance brilliantly. He was ministering to mainly elderly folk and he was a young man. My friend was unsure whether these people were Christian because they did not speak the same religious language as he did, but they insisted they were true believers. Instead of challenging whether they were indeed Christian my friend simply said “it is great we are Christians together, and of course as Christians we all believe (or practice) …” This gentle, time to change conversation caused a number of people to listen to what he had to say, and not a few came to understand the Faith more clearly.
What should we do?
We need to ask God for the wisdom to know what must never be compromised and what issues we should give people time to change.
Having determined what we should give space for change we must not just be content to merely co-exist, but take the long view on helping others to come to a mature mind (Phil 3:15-16). As you minister alongside people of differing views they will get to know you and trust that you have both God’s glory and their best interest at heart.
