Are you ever afraid to say something for fear of being wrong? I am. It feels like there’s so much pressure in our culture right now to stay silent, or to say something so generalized that you’re not really saying anything at all. Truth has a bad rap, because heaven forbid you offend someone by speaking something true for you that isn’t true for them. We have this mindset that there isn’t any universal truth anymore. And for sure no spiritual truth. Like, maybe I see that as a tree, but you say it’s a mountain. Or I see a woman, made in God’s image, but you see a cat. Or what if I say I believe Jesus is the only way to have a relationship with the true God? And not just that I believe that, but that it’s the Truth. Would you say that’s fine for me but not for you? OR that’s fine but that I shouldn’t push my beliefs (merely by speaking them) onto someone else? Are we not allowed to speak our minds anymore? Say what’s on our hearts? Are we not allowed to call people to repentance, or call brothers and sisters to account? Some days I feel like I’m going crazy when I look at our world, when I think of relationships I have, even with believing friends, and I think How can you believe what the Bible says and hold these beliefs about the world? 

And, to be bolder, Black lives do matter. Do you know what else matters? Every other life. Of every other skin color. And those forming in the womb, at any stage. Removing a living baby from the womb and killing it is wrong. 

I’m tired of the fear of man being allowed to control how I speak, and that I stop myself from forming or speaking a full thought in order to not offend someone. I need to speak the truth, because that is what God has called me to. But more important than writing it here, or on social media, is the willingness to speak the truth in conversation, especially with people who don’t agree with me, so that we can work to understand one another and still have relationship. 

Let’s stop this awkward silence. Let’s stop not talking about everything we don’t agree with with people. If we don’t, pretty soon we won’t talk to each other at all, and that’s exactly what our spiritual enemies want: for us to live isolated rather that in real relationship and community that God made us for.