This morning, as I was continuing my purge of my tiny office, I came across a dusty magazine that someone had passed on to me a couple years back. I was about to toss it in the trash can, when I noticed a prominent Christian leader’s name on the cover, beneath a headline that peaked my curiosity. I opened it up and began to read.

The article was an interesting and compellingly written piece, but it left me shaking my head. The content was, frankly, fanciful, building irrational, extra-biblical arguments that rested on a very particular interpretation of one passage of scripture. (The topic was “natural evil,” if you’re curious.)

While I had no problem with this author or the view he represented (even though I found his conclusions improbable), it got me thinking about how we as Christians handle challenging questions. It seemed to me that this author was trying to build a case out of the ether–he ignored obvious inconsistencies, leaving huge, gaping holes in his argument. All of this to defend a very particular understanding of a marginal doctrine that has little to no influence on a believer’s daily life or walk with God.

While the author’s view was harmless, in my opinion, his methodology was anything but. I’ve had one too many friends leave the church because the community they were in responded to genuine questions about everything from creation to Christmas trees, atonement to tattoos, with a horrified gasp, followed by impassioned arguments that lacked not only grace but intellectual integrity. As a result, they came across as either ignorant or disingenuous. And while ignorance may be excusable, “disingenuous” is just a fancy way of saying or dishonest or deceitful.

It’s one thing for a person to leave the church because they disagree with what we’re saying. As much as it grieves me, I can deal with that. It’s another thing for people to leave because they think we’re hypocritical liars who would rather be “right” than honest, like corrupt district attorneys who ignore the evidence in the defendants favor because are only interested in winning their case. That makes me feel queasy, like we’ve failed our questioning friends horribly. And again, this is not a victimless crime–I have friends who have abandoned Christianity (or refused to consider it in the first place) because of this arrogance on our part. I bet you do too. Or maybe you are one of them.

Obviously, the debate about creation vs. evolution (thiestic or otherwise) springs to mind when this topic comes up, but that’s not the only arena where this comes into play, or even the most important one. I mean, seriously–the average American doesn’t spend a lot of time agonizing about what happened to the dinosaurs, past age seven or so. Politics, however–not to mention relationships, gender issues, social problems, and doctrinal divides–we can get pretty worked up about those issues, defending our side at all costs, even when it compromises our character. We close our eyes, ears, and hearts to what our “opposition” has to say, villainize or mischaracterize their position so we can make a mockery of it and them. I’d say we learned this unscrupulous behavior from political pundits who butter their bread by raising our blood pressure, but honestly I think it’s just part of our fallen nature. It’s plain old-fashioned pride, the opposite of the gentle humility with which Christians are supposed to express their faith.

Or maybe it’s not just pride. Maybe there’s a heaping helping of fear fueling our arrogance. Maybe questions scare us, because deep down inside, we’re asking them too.

Maybe we’re afraid our views won’t hold up to the truth. Maybe we think close investigation will prove us wrong. But I truly believe that God is big enough to hold up to our questions. God is truth. And even if we are wrong about some point of doctrine (and being human beings with puny little brains, we can’t possibly understand everything perfectly), that doesn’t mean that God is wrong. Just us.

And that’s okay. After all, we don’t get into heaven by passing a spiritual geography test on which we map out all the points along the Romans Road. We get into heaven by following Jesus there, by grace, through faith. Many aspects of Christianity are complicated, but that is not one of them.

Just for the record, I’m not saying that doctrine and theology are unimportant. If I thought that, I wouldn’t be spending thousands of dollars and hours going back to school to study it, to dive deeper into the Word and get a better understanding of what it says and what it means. I’m just saying that we should avoid getting our panties in a bunch about what lions ate before the fall and other such things, and we definitely shouldn’t be giving friends whose opinions differ from ours theological wedgies!

So maybe I’ll leave it there, before my metaphors get any weirder. (Can you tell I’m on cold medicine right now?!) Don’t give your friends theological wedgies, especially if there are holes in your own underwear.