“After dark one evening, he came to speak with Jesus. ‘Rabbi,’ he said, ‘we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you.’ Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.’” — John 3:2–3 (NLT)
I love being a Christian. It has grounded me in ways I never imagined. That does not mean it always works the way it should. There are days I am fearful when I should be trusting God’s protection. I can get angry over things most people would call minor, and I don’t always walk the way a follower of Christ should. But I am often reminded that the goal was never to be perfect. It is to keep pursuing it, knowing we will never fully arrive, and to keep growing to look a little more like Christ. One place I have felt God growing me over the past decade or so is in how I handle disagreement.
Most people would say we are living in a season of discord. After Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, Martin Luther King Jr., who had often disagreed with him, lamented that we still “haven’t learned to disagree without being violently disagreeable.” Those words are more than sixty years old, and somehow, they still ring true. I do not bring them up because I believe any of us is capable of such an act. I bring them up because I have seen enough bitterness in everyday disagreement that it seems worth looking into our own hearts and asking, “Is this what God would want of us?”
What I have found is that trusting God gives me somewhere to stand. Whether something goes my way or not, whether someone agrees with me or not, I can center myself with Him. I can sense His wisdom guiding my thoughts and words, not necessarily toward agreement, but toward calm and sincerity. I cannot take credit for that. Some of my dearest friends are people I disagree with, and what has held us together was never that one of us won. It was love and mutual respect.
I would love to have the heart of David and the wisdom of Solomon, but the person whose story touches me most is Nicodemus. He was a Pharisee and a respected teacher, a man who knew the Scriptures as well as anyone. Then he encountered Jesus. What fascinates me is how he came. He did not arrive with an accusation. He came on his own, after dark, and opened with respect: “Rabbi, we all know that God has sent you to teach us.” When Jesus told him he must be born again, Nicodemus didn’t argue. He asked. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” (John 3:4). He did not yet understand who he was talking to. He recognized that Jesus was from God without grasping that Jesus was God. But he came to learn.
And the change didn’t happen overnight. Scripture never gives us the moment Nicodemus believed. It shows us a man moving slowly closer. Later, when his fellow leaders were ready to condemn Jesus, his was the voice that asked, “Is it legal to convict a man before he is given a hearing?” (John 7:51). Still a question. And after the cross, when standing near Jesus carried real risk, he appears one last time, alongside Joseph of Arimathea, to bury Him: “With him came Nicodemus, the man who had come to Jesus at night. He brought about seventy-five pounds of perfumed ointment made from myrrh and aloes” (John 19:39). The man who first came in the dark ended up standing in the light.
That is the part that feels familiar to me, and maybe to you. Most of us walk into a disagreement with our answers already loaded. Nicodemus shows us that knowing a great deal and staying teachable are not opposites. Curiosity is a form of a true strength in our faith, humility, and people can usually tell whether we came to learn or came to win. Jesus did not scold him for showing up at night with more questions than faith. He stayed and talked.
So, if there is a conversation you have been dreading, you don’t need a winning argument ready. You might only need one honest question. And if your questions are for God, you can bring those too. He has never turned away someone who came to learn, even in the dark.
Is there a disagreement in your life where you have been preparing your answer instead of asking a question? What question have you been hesitant to bring to God?
A PRAYER
My prayer is that we thank our Heavenly Father for meeting us wherever we come to Him, even in the dark and even with more questions than answers. Quiet our need to be right, and give us hearts that would rather learn than win. Guide our words toward calm and sincerity with the people we disagree with, and keep drawing us, step by step, into Your light. Amen.