24 February 2007

Who's offended?

I have been reading a lot of Mark Batterson's evotional blog recently. He had a great post that I have been chewing on that I wanted to share here. I know how true this is, but I am still working on doing this right. I am good at choosing biblical correctness over politically correct, but I am still working on making so that it is said with grace and love.
I think some of us are more afraid of offending people than we are offending the Holy Spirit. I want to say what I say with great tact. I want to use my right-brain and left-brain to really come at tough topics creatively and logically. And I want to be as positive and as persuasive as I can possibly be. But at the end of the day, sometimes we need to say things that people don't want to hear!

There are moments where you have to make a choice between biblical correctness and political correctness. And it takes good-old fashioned guts to say what people don't want to hear. But I think there is a way to say things so that people may like you less but respect you more!

For what it's worth...whenever I have to have a tough conversation with someone where I have to confront an issue, I almost always reference John 1:14 where it says Jesus was full of grace and truth.

Grace means I'll love you no matter what. Truth means I'll be honest no matter what. Grace without truth is weak and shallow! Truth without grace is counter-productive. But grace and truth is a Christlike combo that will impact people!

2 comments:

The Letter J said...

wow. great post. i struggle with this all the time at work. wow. all too often, i find that i have to much grace, not enough truth. i find myself avoiding conflict, and just forgiving the person. i will pray that i have the grace and truth of Christ when confronting my coworkers, as john 1:14 records. honestly, i do feel weak and shallow when i let something go, when i need to implement truth.

Dana said...

Good post, Erik. Thanks for sharing it with us.