Should Christians Compromise?

Many years ago I was an elder responsible for a team revising the doctrinal statement for our church. To listen to church members concerns we held a series of "town hall" congregational meeting before approving the final draft. While almost everyone loved the more modern language in the changes, you'd have thought we "stomped on the Bible" with some.

Other team members and I were doing Q&A sessions and I made a comment that of course like all group efforts there was a lot of give and take and everybody had to make some compromises. One older gentleman jumped up and said, "Christians should never compromise. Period!" "John" I said, "You and your wife are both Christians right? Are you telling me neither of you have ever compromised?" "Well, sure but never on God's truth." "Then you'll be happy to know neither did we," I responded. "We compromised on phrases and words but there was never any disagreement on anything we believed on which Scripture appears to be crystal clear."

But that got me to thinking about the nature of compromise.

I think we can all agree that we should never compromise on biblical truth. But the truth is we do! There are literally thousands of Christian denominations, each of whom have slightly different doctrinal statements. There are tens of thousands of Christian books on theology, and every author believes they understand God's Truth and hope to correct others who obviously got it wrong. Did they?

A dozen years ago I was leading a group to Israel. I wasn't doing the teaching but every night we gathered after dinner where anyone could ask any question of our pastor. Of course somebody asked a question about "election." "Does God choose those who come to faith, or do individuals choose God?" Pastor Jim's answer was a surprise. "Both are true." Everyone looked at him like they had not heard him correctly. So he went on to explain.

"Is this room moving?" He asked. One man thought we were not moving because buildings don't generally move. But another observed that we lived on a planet and the earth rotates at roughly 1000 miles per hour, so yes, this room is moving. Jim then made this wise observation. "When God makes two statements that appear to be contradictory, or mutually exclusive our western minds find that impossible to grasp. We've been trained to think logically. If it's black, it cannot be white.

But Jewish teachers and scholars thousands of years ago thought differently. When we read in the Book of Exodus about the 10 plagues in one place we read, "God hardened Pharoh's heart." But a few verses later we read, "Pharoh hardened his heart." So which one was it? Jewish rabbis and scholars took this position. "If God speaking though Moses in the Torah spoke these words then both must be true." They felt no need to try to explain this apparent contradiction. They just trusted God at face value- in God’s mind there was no contradiction.

We modern thinkers might conclude they refused to examine the topic critically and compromised. We need to know! Is God a Calvinist, or Arminian? Perhaps both are true, or neither are true exactly as we have come to believe them. Our understanding how God works "behind the curtain," really does not matter to God. The song many of us grew up learning is still true. "Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey." Living with some ambiguity isn't compromise, perhaps it's simple humility.

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1. Trusting everything God says without knowing for certain is the essence of faith. And that God does care about!