fools

I often don’t know what to say to people, especially when I see them sinning. I don’t want to confront, but more than that, I’m not equipped to counter their arguments. It’s not that I don’t have counterpoints, but we can’t agree on enough that my counterpoint even makes sense. When they have different definitions for marriage and sin and family and appropriate sex, we don’t even have enough common understanding to talk about things.

I’ve often been frustrated by that, but it’s explained pretty well in the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians. A good example is verses 12-16 of 1 Corinthians 2:

“The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,

‘Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?’
But we have the mind of Christ.”

That supports my long-time view that as a Christian I shouldn’t even think about judgment and accountability for sin except with fellow believers. Among non-believers I’ve always tried to focus on love and grace; those conversations about lifestyle choices can come after they acknowledge Jesus as Lord. That doesn’t mean giving evil a pass – I think every Christ-follower should fight any encroachment of Satan wherever we see it. But individual sinners I try to treat with love.

Until they have the Spirit, they can’t even start to make sense of all the reasons they should change. Change not because I don’t like something, or it would make me happy, but change because their souls are in danger. But before they have the Spirit, we’re just going to argue and disagree and grow farther and farther apart. If I can somehow build a relationship that turns into true questioning on their part, there’s hope.

I can’t ever forget, though, that in those places where I don’t have the mind of Christ, I’ll be just as confused and unable to understand as they are. In those cases, God’s truth will look like foolishness to me. So that’s always my first place to start, by asking, “Which of us is really the fool?”