The Answer With No Opponent In It

For the believer who has never once described her faith without mentioning somebody else's.

Try it now, before you read any further.

Describe what you believe, in your head, in one sentence. Don't polish it. Just reach for the first words that come, the way you would if somebody asked you at a bus stop with thirty seconds before their bus arrived.

Now check the sentence for a comparison. A "not." A "unlike." A "we don't do the." A quiet reference to a group you were taught to stand at a slight angle to.

Most people find one, and most people are surprised by it, and a good number of them find that when they take the comparison out there isn't much sentence left.

That's not a failure of your faith. It's a fact about your vocabulary, and the two get confused constantly. You've held Christ for years with real steadiness. What you've never been handed is a way of saying so that doesn't run through somebody else's error.

You are able to describe what you hold without naming a single person you hold it against. The written Word states your faith in a run of positives with nothing to push against, and the Holy Spirit is making that description true in you rather than leaving it on a page.

Why the Comparison Feels Like Content

Here's the trick of it. A comparison feels like information, and it isn't quite.

"We're not the sort who do the long liturgy" tells a listener where you stand relative to a thing they may never have seen. It puts you on a map. If the listener happens to know that map, they'll feel informed, which is why this works so well inside the family and so badly outside it.

Say the same sentence to a colleague who's never been in any church and watch what happens. They nod. They have nowhere to put it. You've given them the coordinates of a dispute rather than anything about God.

You aren't shallow, and you aren't insincere. You were handed a dialect in which position is the quickest form of meaning, and you learned it young, and it has served you well in every room where everybody already speaks it.

A Sentence Built Entirely From What Is

Here's the opening line of a passage written to believers who were being pulled several ways at once:

There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.Ephesians 4:4 (KJV)

Read it for opponents. There aren't any. Nobody is being corrected in that sentence, nobody is being distinguished from, and there's no word in it that needs another group to exist before it makes sense.

The whole thing is built out of what is. One body. One Spirit. One hope. You could say that line to somebody who's never been near a church and they'd learn something about God rather than something about a quarrel.

You are held by a description that stands up with nothing to lean against. The written Word states your faith in positives with no contrast inside it, and the Holy Spirit is the one making that description live in you now.

Subtract the Comparison and Count What's Left

Here's what I'd carry out of this if I could take a single thing away with me.

There's a simple test, and it's uncomfortable the first time. Take any sentence you'd use about your faith, remove every comparison, and count the words that survive.

Do it with "we're not the ones who do all the ceremony" and you're left with nothing at all. Do it with "I belong to Jesus Christ and I've never got over it" and you're left with the whole sentence, because there was never anything in it to subtract.

That's the measure. A description that survives the subtraction is content. A description that vanishes was a position, and a position is a fine thing to hold and a poor thing to hand somebody who asked you a question.

A position needs an opponent to stand up, and what you actually hold does not. The written Word gives you exactly that kind of sentence, one that survives every comparison being taken out of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one supplying the content underneath.

This Isn't a Judgment on Your Upbringing

Let me be plain, because there's a version of this message that would hurt you and I refuse to write it.

The people who taught you to speak this way weren't being petty. They were usually holding on to something at a time when holding on had a cost, and a comparative vocabulary is far more often the scar of a real struggle than a habit of contempt.

I'm not asking you to think less of them. I'm not asking you to go back and correct anybody, or to feel that the words you were given were poor. You can keep every one of them and still add a sentence nobody got round to teaching you.

You can honor the people who raised you and still speak in positives. Scripture supplies the positive form without belittling anyone who learned another one, and the Holy Spirit does the adding rather than the demolishing.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Tahoma This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.