Grace vs. Truth

I am currently reading Dan Kimball's book that is making a splash right now--They Like Jesus but Not the Church. (Even as a devout Christian, I can connect with that title--the Church can often frustrate and infuriate me to a degree nothing else can!) Overall, I've been pretty impressed with Dan's ability and commitment to understand both his Christian reader and the non-Christian acquaintances whom he interviewed for the book. In earlier chapters, he was even adept at speaking to both more conservative and more progressive church leaders, particularly in the chapter on the treatment of women--he argued his points in an intelligent way that would be useful to both "complementarian" and "egalitarian" congregations (that is, those who only allow women to teach women and children, and those who believe women can also be called into the same preaching and teaching roles as men).

As I'm now in later chapters, I'm disagreeing with some of the things he says, but those issues aren't the point of this post. I want to talk about something Dan says while discussing how church leaders can compassionately reach out to homosexual persons. "Church leaders need to find a balance between grace and truth," he says, arguing that pastors should present their views on homosexuality without being legalistic or overtly condemning. I understand that Kimball strongly believes that homosexuality is unequivocally wrong, and thus "the truth" equals the "your lifestyle and love are sinful." His definition of grace, then, would be a message of "we are all sinners and in need of God's forgiveness." The question that immediately came screaming to mind: Can grace and truth really be at cross-purposes?

If religious truth is defined as God's message to humanity, wouldn't grace be truth itself? How can there be such thing as a balancing act between grace and truth when the ultimate truth is that God loves us all, and that we should do likewise? Shouldn't the truth that church leaders express to people (even those whom they believe are committing more egregious sins that the rest of us) be the truth of grace?

I know that the flaw of my argument here is that many church leaders would not define the ultimate truth of God as love, but rather as righteousness, and I actually think in that flaw lies the answer to my original question. We all have our own understanding of truth, and chances are, none of us has it exactly right. (That's why I use little-T-truth, because I don't think any of us can fully grasp God's big-T-Truth in this earthly life). So, with our limited human understanding, there may very well be a gap between our understanding of truth and our expression of grace (as Dan implies), but I hope that when faced with this choice, we'll choose to err on the side of grace.