The former 3-time Southern Baptist Convention president, Adrian Rogers, famously said:
“It is better to be divided by truth than to be united in error.”
“It is better to speak the truth that hurts and then heals, than falsehood that comforts and then kills.”
And clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson said:
“The highest possible value is truth, a value much higher than kindness.”
“For example, when you discipline children you often hurt their feelings in the short term so that they can learn to behave properly in the medium to long-term so their lives go well.”
Some might think these are just smarmy ways to simply talk about “tough love.” But these quotes, from people who most of us might otherwise not agree with, are nonetheless echoing biblical truths.
For example, Proverbs 13:14 says that “Whoever refuses to spank his son hates him, but whoever loves his son disciplines him from early on.” NOG
The book of Hebrews 12:11-13 says that it’s not enjoyable while we’re “being punished—it hurts! But afterwards we can see the result, a quiet growth in grace and character.” TLB
Yet we’re commanded to “be ready in season and out of season to reprove, rebuke, and exhort.”
So how do we do this while “speaking the truth in love”?
I suggest that a good start would be by not compromising your “love for the truth.” After all Paul did say “Love rejoices in the truth, but not in evil.” 1Cor 13.6
This remains the case even if those you exhort at the time see it as divisive, hurtful or even unloving! Remember, “At the time, discipline isn’t much fun.”
Paul tells Timothy that a time will come “when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear.”
Now I know that this might sound corny or even worse, prophet-lite, but I really believe that time is here!
For example, I always look at this stunning historical fact as a marker. In just within my own lifetime we’ve had the first ever government-backed same sex marriage legislation. If that wasn’t bad enough governments are now redefining what constitutes a biological male or female person! Actually they’re even changing the language to redefine what a person is!
Merriam-Webster announced late last year that it had chosen the word “They” as their “2019 word of the year.”
“The singular they is a pronoun used to refer to a person whose gender identity is nonbinary…”
These events have never happened in the history of recorded humanity.
Think about that!
This world has seen truly evil, immoral governments. We’ve had the bloodthirsty coliseums, public orgies of the Romans. The Mongol hordes that almost ravaged Europe and even within recent memory the Holocaust camps of Nazi Germany.
Now Jesus said that he “didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword,” i.e., “conflict” (Mat 10.34). He warned his followers that his words would divide people, even your own flesh and blood. Jesus was, in the best sense of the word, divisive. That’s because Jesus knew that his truth, by its very nature, in this world divides.
Now certainly most of us do not seek or want division. Who wants to be known as a “hostile separatist,” who’s always “sowing division”? But if division occurs in the pursuit of doing and speaking truth, then you have to be prepared to live with whatever consequences that may bring.
The fact is that the lukewarm condition within the Church has reached a point where it can no longer be hidden.
This day was inevitable.
Clear lines are being drawn not only in regard to moral, ethical issues but also other matters of doctrine. This is a result of a long term de-emphasis of the truth, i.e., the Gospel about the KOG and the things regarding the procreated, human Son of God.
So let us keep examining and testing ourselves each and every day.
Are we willing to sacrifice property, family, our very lives?
Are we ready to stand behind the enemy lines?
Let us not “fail the test” by remembering the words of the lord Jesus, recorded throughout all 4 Gospels:
If you love your life, you will lose it. But if you hate your life in this world, you’ll gain the life of the coming age.
Let us in our distress, like King David himself, pray that we may “fall into the hands of the Lord for His mercies are great. But not into the hands of wicked men. (2Sam 24.14)
