There’s something rather liberating about that, and it makes us feel reasonable, balanced, measured. As I’ve quipped before with reference to Tim Keller, we all tend to frame debates as if there is one extreme to be avoided over there, and another one over there, but we sit nicely in between them. Very few of us, whether because of our personalities, our fears or something else, are prepared to stand on the boundary, flailing our arms wildly and warning people like John the Baptist, and pushing everybody in the same direction; we would much rather be able to offset the discomfort we experience in pushing “right” by pushing “left” at the same time, as I suggested last year. So we get to defend our doctrine (which might not be inerrancy, but it’s a good example of what I’m talking about), but by reprimanding the Al Mohlers of the world for their intensity and extremism, we get to feel all nice and nuanced about it. Everybody wins.

It works with all sorts of debates. So-called soft complementarians - whom I’ve facetiously defined previously as those who believe the Bible is complementarian but wish it wasn’t - point out noisily the differences between our view and Wayne Grudem’s, or Mark Driscoll’s. Calvinists excuse our Calvinism by saying that we wouldn’t go as far as R C Sproul or Jonathan Edwards. When we talk about sexuality, we explain that Doug Wilson is way over-the-top, but he has a point. We believe in elder government, but not as bombastically as Carl Trueman. We believe God heals today, but with more theological refinement than Bill Johnson. We hold to the truthfulness of Genesis, but not like Ken Ham. So long as there’s a theological stooge out there on the boundaries somewhere, ideally someone who is on our team but can quickly be painted as a bit overzealous and intense, we’re protected: they’ll stand tall against the onslaught of secularism (or whatever), and we’ll hide behind them, with the occasional raised eyebrow and apologetic cough to indicate that we don’t agree with everything they’re saying. Bless them.

Now: there’s nothing wrong with mediating positions. Nor is there anything wrong with holding a view that involves standing in between A and B on a spectrum, and on many of the issues above, that’s exactly what I do, as regular readers will know. But there is something very wrong with a lack of courage which masquerades as nuance, a rhetorically (even cynically) motivated dig at our friends to appear more palatable to our opponents. You can say what you like about Mohler, Driscoll, Wilson and the rest, but they don’t lack courage. In fact, our nuanced positions are only possible because they are out there on the fence line, since if they weren’t, we’d have to be. As Jack Nicholson famously put it in A Few Good Men, “Deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.” Many of us know what that feels like.

So how can you tell the difference? The heart is a mixture of motives at best, so how can you tell whether you’re expressing the position you hold like that based on nothing but conviction - and I believe, of course, that soft complementarianism, fluffy Calvinism and so on are biblically defensible and indeed persuasive - or based on timidity, in that you don’t want to appear extreme (or even cynicism, in that you want to bash someone else to make yourself look better)? I’ve thought about that a lot of late, because it’s something I’m ever at risk of, what with my desperate desire for everybody to like me, and my increasing predilection for words like “Reformedish”. And my suggestion is that there’s a big difference between saying “I love them, but I disagree with them about X”, and “I disagree with them about X, but I love them.” In the first statement, the thing you’re trying to emphasise, and to make sure you’ve communicated effectively, is your disagreement, so that nobody will take you for a lairy/rabid/misogynist/extremist/whatever person. In the second, the thing you’re trying to emphasise is what you share in common with them, so that nobody will think you don’t respect their courage and conviction, even where you have an alternative view of something. The difference can be massive.

When it comes to Christian brothers and sisters who take strong lines, speak with courage and stand firm in the face of ridicule and opposition, I want the main thing I communicate to be my love, affection and admiration for them, rather than any disagreements we may have. I don’t want to be the person who rises and sleeps under the blanket of security that they provide, and then questions the manner in which they provide it; I’d rather just say thank you, and be on my way. Admittedly, that last sentence may be lost on those who haven’t seen A Few Good Men. But then if you haven’t seen A Few Good Men, you probably haven’t lived.