Grayson Taylor

I heard this often growing up in the churches of Christ, and I appreciated it: go study the Bible for yourself to make sure what you hear on Sunday lines up with Scripture. Many of you heard this from preachers who had the integrity and honesty to say things like that. That takes humility. For some preachers, though, the underlying assumption was that if you did that study, and did it properly, you would reach the same conclusions you’d hear preached in churches of Christ across the nation. There was a way of reading the Bible that helped guarantee that outcome: command, example, and necessary inference. What many of us ran into when we studied using that approach was inconsistency. We found commands that weren’t followed, and no one seemed to mind. We found examples that weren’t followed, and no one seemed to mind. We found necessary inferences that didn’t seem necessary at all! At the same time, we heard others condemned for not following other commands and examples, or for drawing different inferences. Some of those people were friends or family members we loved a great deal. That was a troubling discovery. Then young people took their hard questions to the preacher or an elder, and many were brushed aside as troublemakers or labeled divisive. When you’re told to go study, and that study raises questions, and then you’re dismissed for asking them, it’s hard to take those people seriously. And if you’re accused of sinning by causing division just for asking honest questions, it’s hard to stick around. Young people search for truth paired with integrity and consistency, and some struggled to find it. For many, that turned them away from everything, and they left completely. Others were able to stay. One thing I’ve learned is that if you build a system that forces everything in the Bible onto the same level (in/out, heaven/hell), and one thread in that system gets rightfully pulled (or even just questioned), people lose trust, feel lied to, and the whole thing can quickly unravel. It’s hard for them to stay when that happens, and often they get blamed as the troublemaker for leaving. I think we can do better than that. We can all honestly search the Scriptures for truth. We won’t all agree on every item, but we should stick together in the effort. When hard questions are asked, honor them. Give them time and attention. Embrace the asking. Love the person. Work on finding answers together. Maybe their “troublemaking” is really your insecurity when you find yourself unable to answer the question and then get defensive. We would have lost far fewer people along the way with just this one adjustment. Maybe we can lose fewer in the future if we more lovingly embrace those who are searching for truth but don’t reach all the same conclusions we have. Have you ever been there, or seen/done any of that?