How to Live with People with Different Preferences

Photo: ©Pavle Bugarski from Getty Images via Canva.com

The gospel practicalized is a transcendent lifestyle that overrides cultural, political, and religious traditions, preferences, and expectations. The convolution between primary and secondary things can be dizzying, especially in a world that works overtime to invert what is good with evil. A practicalized gospel teaches us to live well with others, especially those who make choices that are different from ours. In a world gone mad, all Christians must work hard to distinguish the negotiable from the non-negotiable.

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Different Strokes

Working through preferential, secondary issues is like wrestling a greased pig: you can’t get your arms around them all, and just when you think you have a good grasp on the essential things, something changes. Our part of the country does [fill in the blank], and another part of the country does it differently. This family believes [such-and-such] is correct, while the next family does the opposite.

• Should I say “in Jesus’ name” at the end of all my prayers?
• Can I drink a beer?
• Is it wrong to have lost friends?
• Should I agree with everything my church is doing?
• Why did he vote for that person?

Then, there is the generational struggle. The old guard is perplexed by the ubiquitous control of technology, while the new guard drinks technology like water, living with it as though it were an addictive appendage. The older you get, the more you feel like the “get off my lawn” guy as you sing along with Bob Dylan about how the times are “a-changin’.”

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Gospel Priority

Because of the myriad of preferences and false assumptions, wisdom recognizes it’s best not to make cultural or religious preferences the point of focus or normative while choosing to learn how to live out the practicalities of the gospel of first importance. The gospel practicalized is a transcendent lifestyle that rises above our cultural and religious traditions, preferences, and expectations. The more adept you are at making these gospel applications, the less soul noise you’ll experience in a world that makes a living shouting at each other.

Christ is our glorious example of someone who was willing to obey the customs of His day, and for the most part, He did follow those customs unless they negatively impacted the higher purposes of the gospel. Learning how to live Christlike regarding secondary matters is the goal for all believers. Here is a five-step, sequential process that works in a transformative progression that loosens the Christian from the control of secondary issues. These steps are essential and non-negotiable if you want to be transformed from the inside out and enabled to love others well, especially those who do things differently from you.

• Step 1: The gospel teaches that we all are mutually depraved and equally in need of a great Savior. Mercifully, God came to each of us—who are born from above—and gave us the gift of salvation. This gift of salvation has many elements: faith, repentance, justification, adoption, definitive sanctification, etc.
• Step 2: After God regenerates us, our inner person begins a renewal process by the power of the gospel (Ephesians 4:23). We call this lifelong process progressive sanctification, where we mature incrementally, much like a child growing from infancy to adulthood.
• Step 3: The doctrines of salvation and sanctification are humbling doctrines. Together, they remind us of our helplessness apart from the gospel’s rescuing and restoring. Correctly understanding our salvation and sanctification humbles us.
• Step 4: James 4:6 promises that the humble person will receive God’s empowering favor, which enables the Christian to change, grow, and mature. This process enables us to love others, including loving hard-to-love people.
• Step 5: 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 provides a list of love actions that we can apply to our relationships. Read this list by inserting your name each time love is mentioned or implied.

The love list merely samples how a gospel-motivated person operates in God’s world. A gospelized person can love others expansively because of Christ’s strength operating in them (Philippians 4:13). This empowerment makes the gospel (Christ) the base for and point of departure when considering how to live with others who have different preferences.

Gospel Logic

• Gospel + Transformation = Humility
• Humility + Empowering Grace = God-centered love actions—the ability to love others who are different.

The danger of not following this gospel formula can make your preferences an undeviating mandate, which will more than likely make what you prefer a yoke of bondage around your friends’ necks. Understanding the power of preferences and the practicalization of the gospel to offset rules and traditions is crucial. The gospel trains and equips us to experience its transformative power rather than managing our unique-to-us preferences.

Is the goal in our relationships to control them with our set of secondary rules? Or would we prefer to lead them into a deeper, practicalized understanding of the gospel that frees them to decide what’s best for them regarding secondary issues? The former will bind their consciences into lifelong bondage and possibly future rebellion. The latter will hopefully teach them how to change, grow, and mature—all within the power and parameters of the gospel.

Without the gospel, our friends will learn preferences by rote, context, and culture. The New Testament equivalent to this was the Pharisees. They codified the rules without deviation or sound apologetics. In time, their religion became a joyless, fear-based, hollow, and mandated set of rules that made them out of sync with the culture they were supposed to evangelize.

Gospel Keys

The gospel is more pneumatic than top-down rigid rules. Gospel people are not afraid to penetrate their culture, choosing to become all things to all people while praying that God will win some of them to Himself. Two extreme worldviews adulterate this gospel objective:

• Those who separate from the world, which stifles the gospel.
• Those who imbibe the world, which also stifles the gospel.

Christ did not separate or imbibe. He penetrated the culture, became connected to, sympathized with, and helped them change without being distant, afraid, self-righteous, or compromised. Perhaps these six gospel keys will help you assess how well you engage others who believe differently from you.

1. Regenerated: Are you born again?
2. Affection: How would you describe your affection for the gospel?
3. Love Others: Are you managed by a desire to love others, or do their preferences control you?
4. Engage Others: Do you approach others out of a heart of love?
5. Adapt to Others: Do you adapt to other people’s preferences without compromising the gospel? Do you know how to adapt without compromising the gospel?
6. Win Others: Will you compromise your preferences for the sake of the gospel?

Here are the questions simplified: Regenerated + Affection + Love Others + Engage Others + Adapt to Others = Win Others.

Gospel Illustrated

When our kids were younger, our family would visit the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. It’s a sprawling, beautiful place with so much to see and do, in addition to touring the Biltmore mansion. One of our favorite things was to visit the winery on the estate. On one occasion, we invited some of our conservative friends, who are very close to us. Our children had sleepovers with their children and vice-versa. We love this family, and they have an anti-alcohol stance.

In overly simplistic, religious terms, you might consider them legalists, and we would be the pejorative liberals. Before our Biltmore visit, we sat down with our children to discuss discretion regarding preferences in the context of loving others who differ from us on secondary matters. The bottom line was that we would not go to the winery or even mention its existence while with our friends. Time in the winery was secondary to loving this family.

Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God (1 Corinthians 8:1-3).

Our children were stellar. We enjoyed our friends while not making a secondary issue like the winery a point for division. I suspect they have had similar discussions about our lifestyle choices with their children. It is impossible to be in 100% agreement with everyone. Fortunately, you do not have to make a lock-step agreement essential for relating and engaging with others. This grace gift from the Lord is one of the things that sets Christians apart. We can be the aggressors when it comes to relating to those who are different from us.

Call to Action

The gospel does not demand that you have an eclectic friend list, but it should free you to engage with and enjoy those who do things differently from you. Isn’t this why we love Jesus so much? We were not like Him, but He entered our world, hoping to engage, befriend, and transform some of us.

1. Do you intentionally relate to those who are different from you? What does being salt and light in the culture look like for you?
2. Are you more afraid of the influence of others; thus, you separate from them, or are you more determined to influence those who differ from you with the practical message of the gospel?
3. Culture and politics are the most divisive contexts in our world today. The easy thing to do is separate from those who choose differently from us. In light of this temptation, what should “being Jesus to the world” look like for you? Perhaps a time of life over coffee with a friend would prove wise and transformative.

Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight (Romans 12:16).

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Rick Thomas

Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.

In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master’s University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).