Evangelist Christine Caine believes it’s essential for Christians who are fearful or struggling in an increasingly secular culture to remember an important reality that sometimes gets lost in the social chaos: It’s essential to find a balance between truth and love.
Caine, author of the new book, Unexpected: Leave Fear Behind, Move Forward in Faith, Embrace the Adventure, recently told “The Billy Hallowell Podcast” that Americans today might find increased secularization troubling, but that her own experience growing up in Australia previously prepared her for such a dynamic.
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“There’s a great benefit of growing up in a very secular, humanist, pluralistic culture,” Caine said, speaking of her life in Australia. “There was no cultural Christianity … it didn’t exist. I had to learn to navigate my faith from the outset in a very pluralistic culture.”
Listen to Caine’s powerful message about the balance between truth and love:
She said she learned early on what it meant to exist as a Christian in a culture that didn’t embrace faith values. In America, some people are now waking up to that same reality, especially as culture rapidly shifts.
“Now we have to really think through what does it mean [to be a Christian],” Caine said, explaining that the dynamic yields increased authenticity. “There is no denying … culture is massively shifting.”
Despite the worries that some Christians have and the pervasive issues that are emerging, Caine believes that there are people out there who are “looking for an authentic faith.” But she argued that believers cannot sacrifice truth if they truly want to reach people with the gospel.
“If you learn to speak the truth in love—perhaps historically we haven’t been great at speaking the truth in love,” she said. “The answer to not being good at speaking the truth in love is not to throw out truth in the name of love. It’s to get better at speaking the truth in love.”
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Caine also pushed back against the “public venting” and the ranting and raving that sometimes rages on social media. Rather than engaging in these activities, she encouraged people to spend more praying, getting to know Jesus and moving forward from there.
“We need to just privately before God examine our hearts,” she said. “Have lots of conversations behind the scenes before we start to take a public stance in certain ways.”
In Caine’s new book, Unexpected, she seeks to help people overcome challenges and trials in life, encouraging readers to approach trials from a place of faith rather than fear.
“I think that we live in this false reality that somehow we can control what’s going on,” she said, sharing her own experience with cancer, which has since been healed. “Jesus didn’t say ‘if trials will come,’ he said ‘when trials will come in this world you will have trial and tribulation but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.'”
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Caine also spoke about fears surrounding world events that seem so uncertain, encouraging people not to be surprised and to embrace “faith and peace in the midst of turmoil.”
“If we really believe the Bible it’s going to get crazier and crazier,” she said. “Everything in our culture I think currently is designed to make Christians pull back in fear … I think that’s what fear does: fear paralyzes you, fear cripples you.”
She’s hoping people walk away from Unexpected encouraged and emboldened, realizing that there’s one truth worth fully embracing.
“Ultimately, there is only one way to God, and His name is Jesus,” she said.
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