Telling the Truth, Even When it’s Unpopular
Part 2 of an interview with Steve Brown,
Author of Talk the Walk: How to Be
Right without Being Insufferable
The Christian faith is true, and while we may be right on issues of salvation and theology, we may miss the less articulated truths of humility, love, and forgiveness. We live in a culture that is increasingly hostile to Christians and their faith. Talk the Walk (New Growth Press) by pastor and author Steve Brown unpacks the call to “go out into the world” and share faith by being truthful and winsome. By helping men and women love others out of a deeper love in Christ—the one who first loved us—Talk the Walk helps Christians present the gospel clearly and with compassion.
Brown
encourages readers to:
- Take a step back and look at others’ perceptions.
- Explore the tools necessary to accomplish an attitude change of confidence and humility, repentance and truth.
- Share the message of Christ without distorting it.
- Speak confidently without being cold.
- By operating out of humble gratitude for the gospel, begin to talk the walk of Christian faith, reflecting the love and truth of Jesus.
This
attitude-altering book invites Christians to cultivate boldness and humility in
communicating gospel truth. By uncovering self-righteousness and spiritual
arrogance, Talk the Walk shatters
stereotypes and helps believers consider how they present the good news without
watering it down.
Q: Why can’t we all agree on truth?
When one is
referencing the disagreement on truth claims between Christians and
unbelievers, it has to do with how one sees truth. A meta-narrative is a
narrative at the heart of all that is, explaining all that is. The Christian
faith is a stable (and true) meta-narrative, and we live in a culture that
rejects all meta-narratives. In other words, there isn’t any such thing. If one
decides to be “good,” for instance, one must ask, “Why is good, good?” If
there’s no meta-narrative (no God), then good is what one decides is good and everything
is up for grabs.
But then there
are a lot of places where Christians disagree among themselves about certain
truths. In this book, I’ve tried to avoid those areas of disagreement and
center in on what C. S. Lewis called mere
Christianity (a term he got from Richard Baxter, a seventeenth-century
English Puritan church leader and theologian), referring to the basics of the Christian faith as expressed in,
for instance, the Apostles’ Creed. The Evangelical Presbyterian motto is quite
good: “In Essentials, Unity. In Non-Essentials, Liberty. In All Things,
Charity.” That works for me.
Q: What do you mean when you say, “We are right and they
are wrong”? Why is it dangerous to be right?
I mean that we are right and they are wrong . . . but certainly not that we are right about
everything and they are wrong about everything. In fact, they may be more right
than we are, and we could be more wrong than they are. But in terms of the
eternal verities of the Christian faith (again, mere Christianity), we really
are right and those who disagree are wrong. If I didn’t believe that, I would
not have written this book, and I would have gone into vinyl repair where it
didn’t matter. Not only that, if Christopher Hitchens in his book God Is Not Great didn’t believe he was
right and Christians wrong, he would not have written his book either. The
difference is I really am right and he really is wrong, and now he knows it.
That’s not arrogance; it’s the nature of truth. Aristotle’s principle of
non-contradiction—that contradictory propositions cannot both be true—is
helpful to remember.
The Christian
faith is either right or wrong. If it’s right, it’s the best news the world has
ever heard. If it’s wrong, it doesn’t matter. We don’t say that very often
because it gives offense. But it needs to be remembered and said often.
When Barry Goldwater ran for president, he
had the unfortunate habit of being controversial in the wrong places. For
instance, he would sometimes campaign in Florida and speak against Social
Security and in Tennessee speak against the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority).
One of Goldwater’s senator friends said to him, “Barry, I know you have to walk
through the field where the bull resides, but you don’t have to wave a red flag
in his face every time you do.” That would be good advice for Christians. We
don’t have to die on every hill, fight in every battle, and correct every
error. Frankly, we’re not that good or wise. Silence really is golden,
especially when words are so often used to manipulate and demean others, to
gain power, or to protect “our castle.” Sometimes silence is its own witness.
That doesn’t mean Christians should not speak
truth. It does mean, however, some truths are more important than others.
Christians should pick their battles very carefully when talking to
unbelievers, and those battles should rarely be battles over partisan politics,
social mores or minor theological propositions. Frankly, unbelievers don’t care
about how many angels can stand on the head of a pin or which political
position is anointed by God. Forgiveness, love and redemption should be shouted
from the rooftops, but some subjects should be relegated to the basement.
Q: How can we confidently speak the truth without coming
off as arrogant or self-righteous?
I hate to keep
bringing up the subject, but truth isn’t the problem. It’s the speaker of that
truth. One time, the late Swiss Christian physician/psychiatrist Paul Tournier
was asked if he knew Christians who didn’t live their faith. “Of course I do,”
he replied. “Me.” The way one speaks truth without coming off as arrogant or
self-righteous is not to be arrogant and self-righteous. If the Bible is true
(and I have good reasons to believe it is), when we bring our witness to the
world, get baptized or join the church, we’re making a public announcement
about our sin, neediness and lostness. That reality doesn’t dissipate on the
good side of our witness, our baptism or our church membership.
A dangerous
prayer is the Psalmist’s prayer (Psalm 139), “Search me, O God, and know my
heart . . . see if there be any grievous way in me.” That is a prayer
God almost always answers, and it should be prayed before we ever try to speak
truth to those who don’t want to hear.
There’s an old
story of a young man applying for a job. When the man entered the owner’s
office, he was working on some papers and said, “Take a chair. I’ll be with you
in a minute.” “Sir,” the young man said, “I’m the son of Senator Smith.”
“Then,” the boss said, “take two chairs.”
Christians hardly
ever take two chairs. The Scripture simply doesn’t allow it.
Q: We hear the phrase “speak the truth in love” often,
but are there things we are misunderstanding about love that result in not
speaking the truth well?
I wrote a chapter
on love for this book, but it turned out to be a lot different than I thought.
I found out I didn’t have the foggiest idea of what love was. And you don’t
either. Passages such as 1 Corinthians 13 are “checklists” describing what love
does, not what it is. I know about the different Greek words for love, but that
doesn’t help either. As a matter of fact, love happens. When Supreme Court
Justice Potter Stewart described obscenity
as something he couldn’t define but knew when he saw it, he could have been
describing love. Love can’t be fixed, controlled, manufactured or earned. It
comes from being loved unconditionally, deeply and without reservation
(something you know when it happens), and it’s the key to our witness to
unbelievers. One can’t love until one has been loved and then only to the
degree to which one has been loved. We are called to practice love at church
(no mean thing); and then, when we get that right, to go out into an unloving
world and become instruments whereby the world experiences it. They will know
it too, when they experience it.
I think we
sometimes talk about love too much. We preach too many sermons, write too many
books and pontificate too often. Love really does happen, and it happens when
Christians hang out with Jesus. In fact, the solution to most of the problems
we have with ourselves and with the world is to just go to Jesus and then not
leave until we’ve been loved. You’ll know, and they will too.
Q: How do we, as Christians, create questions in the
minds of unbelievers?
By doing the
unexpected. Martin Luther, for instance, gave some advice to a pastor friend
that was helpful. He pointed out that certain things were very irritating to
the very religious. He told his friend to find out what they were and then to
“do them.” I’m sure Luther would put some boundaries on that advice, but not
much. Our subculture has created a list of laws that would make an Orthodox
rabbi blush. There are so many “do’s” and “don’ts” that it’s intimidating. The
truth is most of those are not from the God of the Bible but from our own
efforts to be better and better every day and in every way. Transformation is
no longer being increasingly like Jesus but becoming increasingly more
religious.
So, to create
questions, Christians need to break out of that mold, push the line and shock
the world. We do that by loving the wrong people, going to the wrong places,
quoting the wrong writers and cutting slack for the unrepentant, and it goes on
and on. I have a friend who has Bible studies for strippers and another friend
who is straight who goes to gay bars to hang out. You wouldn’t believe the
questions.
I think it’s
important for Christians to figure out where in their own lives the comfort
zone is . . . and then to go one step further.
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