Years ago a friend and I would greet people at our church and tease friends who would show up with their shirts tucked in or be semi-dressed up for church.
We’d often welcome them to church and ask what they were dressed up for.
Sometimes we would even untuck their shirts for them.
My wife called me out on it.
She helped me understand what was really happening.
By telling people they shouldn’t dress nice for church, we were becoming the same dress code police we had grown tired of in other churches.
We were telling people like herself, who often enjoyed dressing up, that they weren’t really welcome.
We were enacting the same inhospitality that we disliked seeing elsewhere.
I see the same thing happening around me today.
People are writing others off because they don’t adhere to the same strict beliefs as others.
Maybe you’ve seen it too.
The coworker who sees your disagreement as disloyalty. The progressive who dismisses anyone using the wrong terminology. The conservative who questions someone’s faith over political disagreements.
By definition, fundamentalism isn’t just holding strong beliefs—it’s requiring others to perform agreement with those beliefs to earn your acceptance.
Fundamentalism isn’t just about what rules you believe — it’s about insisting others follow your rules to belong.
You can believe something is absolutely true and still create space for disagreement, questions, and dialogue. The problem isn’t your conviction (even if I may entirely disagree with it) — it’s the forced coercion.
The challenge is taking a step back and being honest enough to say, “I don’t see it that way, and I believe I’m right about this—but help me understand how you came to see it differently.”
…and then really listening, not to surrender truth, but to love the person in front of you.
A friend once said something about someone that stuck with me, “I know he doesn’t agree with me and my choices, but I know he loves me.”
In our politically charged environment, I hope that can continually be said of me.
