In his new book, Essentially One, Jonathan Lamb encourages to stop judging fellow Christians
In 2018, the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year was ‘toxic’. The word was used widely in a range of environmental and social contexts and, significantly, it was often linked to poisonous relationships and harsh rhetoric, not least in the world of politics.
One UK Labour MP, Laura Pidcock, captured newspaper headlines when she said she could never be friends with a Conservative: ‘I have absolutely no intention of being friends with any of them.’1 She saw them as ‘the enemy’. Adversarial and polarised attitudes are not limited to the world of politics. We find them closer to home too. ‘Truth before friendship’ was the unfortunate slogan among some US conservative Reformed Christians, leading John Frame to comment: ‘We must not speak the truth without thinking of the effect of our formulations on our fellow Christians, even our opponents.’2 This is fundamental to the way we act and speak, particularly in situations of conflict between believers.
