Well, I can’t make up my mind to fill this in. Maybe I am already unpopular enough in some circles and am just afraid to make it worse. The reality is that we all believe things that we don’t share because of the pain or the absence of reward or perhaps because they aren’t things we believe – they are just preferences. As a pastor whose responsibility is to teach the whole counsel of God I have often thought about the things I would rather not teach. It’s so much easier to major on majors and to be silent on minors. Rodney King would fit into a lot of pulpits today. (Can’t we all just get along?)

If Jesus were asked to fill in this spot on this blog, I don’t think he would have much of a problem. He felt pretty comfortable saying all sorts of unpopular things – not to irritate but to save through knowledge of the truth. In the words of D James Kennedy, “I would rather know the saddest fact than be deluded by the sweetest lie.”

The advice I have heard is shout your beliefs and whisper your doubts. I now think that is not good advice. It just produces a lot of whispering Christians who can’t process and who lose their connection to other people who know that ambiguity is there – no one will just admit it, and we end up looking silly and dishonest.