According to the running log of questions received by our presenters, whether or not to use preferred pronouns is a very common one. It affects a very large number of parents, siblings, and friends of LGBTQ+ folks, many of whom have already been wrestling for months or years with the relational and spiritual considerations at play. We spent several months discussing the question with called workers, church leaders, and real LGBTQ folks, and will continue that conversation for many more months. In all of these discussions we remain fully committed to the truth and love demonstrated by our Savior.

We do have something concrete to say about preferred pronouns. Certainly, we’re not going to say you should always use them. But we’re also not going to say that using them is always sinful, either. What we’re suggesting, based on our Lutheran understanding of law and gospel, is that you should use your best Christian judgment to apply the many facets of God’s unchanging will in various ways depending on what the situation calls for. As always, base your judgment in the grace and truth of our Savior, and pray about it. Maybe call your pastor. Then, make the best call you can think of. But we don’t believe this is an easy “yes or no” subject – that’s the concrete part. Believers making decisions in the best prayerful wisdom available to them should not feel condemned outright for their choice to use or refrain from using preferred pronouns.

Let’s talk a bit about two relevant facets of God’s will that we see numerous times in the Bible: Forbearance and Providence. Forbearance is the act of withholding judgment, punishment, or correction from someone who has gotten something wrong. Providence is God’s commitment to provide for the needs of his entire creation, plants and animals, believers and unbelievers alike, despite the whole universe bearing the marks of human rebellion and sin. The two concepts are similar in that they both draw from God’s deep well of mercy and love for the world he made. They differ in that forbearance is an act of merciful withholding while providence is an act of merciful giving.

The relevance of these concepts to the question at hand is simply this: forbearance and providence allow for sin to be “passed over,” for a time (Ro 3:25; Acts 17:30). They pick their battles, and in God’s case we see him saying constantly throughout the Old Testament, “I’ll bear with you, deal gently with you despite your rebellious nature and ignorance, and make it all work out for the good of my people.” The rainbow after the flood, interestingly, came with a promise of both forbearance and providence from God.

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But aren’t preferred pronouns a form of lying?

Not necessarily. Obliging someone’s request, even if the request is rooted in a misunderstanding, does not always equate to affirming their beliefs. If you invite your extreme vegan neighbor – the one who throws red paint on fur-clad pedestrians, for whom this isn’t a matter of health, but of life-and-death morality – over for dinner, are you going to serve a pot roast? Of course not. But wouldn’t that be an opportunity to push back against their mistaken beliefs? Aren’t you running the risk that they interpret your falafel wraps as an affirmation of their convictions? Yes, but there’s an opportunity here for something critical in the evangelism process: real, curious connection with another soul. There is a time for everything, says Solomon. There will be times when your love of order and correction must be tamped down for the sake of building the relationship. This is forbearance.

Or, let’s get a bit heavier. Your sister left her husband, and she’s been very fragile since. But the thing is, you really liked him and have reason to suspect that he’s innocent of the accusations against him. Do you insist on continuing to refer to your sister using her ex’s last name, because you believe the marriage was not justifiably ended? If your sister is going through something big and needs a friend to help her sort through her actions, is terminology where you’re going to start? We intuitively know that there are hills that just aren’t worth dying on, and we see God making similar choices over and over again with his chosen people – this forbearance is practically the refrain of half of the Old Testament (see Ro 3:25; all of Hosea).

All that said, friends, don’t get all high and mighty about choosing mercy. The speck of dust in your neighbor’s eye might be surprisingly similar to the plank in your own; you might have more in common than you think. We all have things that we struggle with. Maybe things of which we are ashamed. Aspects of our character we’d prefer other people not to be aware of. There are hidden places in the inner life even of unbelievers that they would not like to see a bright light illuminate or become matters for open discussion.

And, so far, we’ve only mentioned the crooked places in our hearts that we are conscious of. How many blind spots are there in our own moral vision? How clearly do we see all our own faults? How many imperfections in our character are we blissfully unaware of? Finally if God would treat us as our sins deserve, who of us would be able to stand in the bright gaze of his holy presence? Not every sin arises out of a spirit of arrogant rebellion. Some come from just plain old cultural- or situationally-influenced ignorance.

Finally, there’s this: even if someone has not arrived at a clear, correct view of themselves or creation, is there nothing we can learn from hearing about their struggles? Listening to their pain? Empathy is critical among fellow Christians, stumbling together along the narrow way. There are a number of reasons why folks may choose to adopt alternate pronouns, and not all of them are rooted in an arrogant and wholesale rejection of God’s creation-gift of gender and sex. You may even be able to sympathize with them. As we’ve said before, be a generous and curious listener, and consider Luther’s advice to put the best possible construction on the words and actions of our neighbors. Listening well, taking each other seriously – these are acts of kindness, and small acts of providence.

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Yes, just because God acts a certain way doesn’t always mean it’s wise for his children to do the same. We can’t and shouldn’t raise up foreign kings to dole out corrective discipline on wayward believers. We shouldn’t act as the judges of a person’s heart or faith. We can’t create new biological sexes.

But this isn’t one of those instances of “God-only” actions. We see encouragements for us toward forbearance and providence numerous times in the Bible (Col. 3:13, 1 Cor. 9:19-23, all of Jonah 4, to name a few). Encouragement to overlook faults, bear with each other, and treat each other with kindness and gentleness is all over Scriptures, both in the New Testament and the Old.

Now let us say again, we are not claiming that using preferred pronouns is the right move all the time. It might not even be the right move most of the time. If it just feels flat-out wrong to you, don’t sear your conscience (Ro 14:23) – but keep praying about it, and be sure to explain this internal struggle to the person in question. If you have solid reason to suspect that your 11 year-old is just trying to be trendy or push buttons by flippantly identifying with a suffering demographic who wouldn’t wish their burden on their worst enemy, go ahead and call out that sin. If you’re in a Christian school context in which accepting preferred pronouns as a rule would communicate something false to your students about God’s good creation of gender, that’s a different story.

But even in those cases, consider first that the individuals in question may be serious and trying to communicate something: they may be suffering in a complicated way. Ask some good, curious questions first. What you learn may not change what action you ultimately take, but it may change how you go about it and what message the individual takes away from it.

And if it’s your coworker, your neighbor, or your nephew whom you don’t know all that well, consider that you may not be in a position to understand why they’ve adopted alternate pronouns. Act accordingly, take the opportunities you’re given to learn more, but most of all make your time with them count. If you can push back against their pronoun usage on a foundation of genuine love, care, and an accurate read on the situation, go forth in confidence. If you can’t, don’t sweat it. It’s forbearance and providence. You have a wide, wide range of Christlike truths and mercies at your disposal with which to love them well.

Because in all these conversations about language, it’s critical to remember that when we use another’s preferred pronouns as an act of forbearance, we do so in the interest of providence: building a caring, patient relationship and having a deeper conversation that can lead to deeper truths. Accommodating oneself to another’s preferred pronouns is never the end goal, but a path we may choose to follow which we pray will lead to an ever growing understanding of all of Christ’s grace and truth.