The Tension Where Truth Lives

After more than twenty years of preaching, someone who knew me well once asked a question that stayed with me: “Why do you dumb down your preaching?” It wasn’t criticism. It was clarity. She knew my capacity… and she didn’t always hear it reflected in my words. At the time, I told myself I was being accessible, careful, pastoral. But seasons have a way of revealing whether we are protecting people… or preparing them.

That question has returned in this season, not to accuse me, but to invite me deeper.

When Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” He was not collecting information. He was cultivating formation. He was holding up a mirror — not so they could see Him more clearly, but so they could see themselves more honestly. Questions, in Jesus’ ministry, were never about His need to know; they were about their need to see.

For three years, Jesus walked with them. He listened to them. He watched how they processed truth, how they misunderstood it, how they repeated what they heard, and where they struggled to articulate what they believed. He did not rush them. He did not overload them. He stretched them — intentionally — by creating tension with words that demanded reflection rather than reaction.

The question was part of the development.

“Who do men say that I am?” exposed the noise around them.
“Who do you say that I am?” confronted the formation within them.

This was not an examination. It was expansion.

Jesus was enlarging their internal capacity so they could eventually carry external weight — the weight of proclaiming the Gospel without Him physically present, the weight of establishing and continuing the Church, the weight of caring for a message powerful enough to transform the world yet fragile enough to be entrusted to human hands.

This is why the moment matters so deeply. Before there could be commissioning, there had to be clarity. Before there could be public ministry, there had to be private conviction. Before they could speak for Him in the world, they had to see themselves rightly in relation to Him.

This is also why language matters.

Jesus spoke in a way a child could understand and a scholar could wrestle with — not by diluting truth, but by layering it. Simple enough to enter. Deep enough to remain. His words carried tension, and that tension stretched capacity. Formation happened not through force, but through faithful engagement over time.

Perhaps the calling of those who teach, preach, and lead is not to simplify truth until it feels light, but to present it in a way that expands people until they can carry it.

Jesus did not ask questions to see if His disciples were ready.

He asked questions to make them ready.

And in that holy development, the weight of the question revealed the weight of their assignment — the care of the Gospel message and the establishment and continuation of the Church.

Pastor Charles E. Howse Jr
Beth-El Baptist Church
@highlight
http://thetensionwheretruthlives.org