McKnight suggests that different people take different approaches to taming parakeets.

When two sets of scriptures seem to contradict, we tend to choose a winner and find a way to diminish the other. Your articles on a "third way" address this problem. My conviction is that we have to treat both passages as 100% true, and wrestle with what that means. And we must be humble about the fallibility of our wrestling.

First, part of the problem is words. Even your own, Jay. You regularly speak about the problems of a legalistic interpretation of scripture — yet in this post, you refer to the "commands we read in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2."

I do not see them as commands, but rather as Paul applying the only command of Jesus, to love others as he loved us, to a specific situation. So what we often interpret as commands (because they come from New Testament writers), are rather examples of how to apply this most basic of all principles to a specific situation.

And that is the second point: These are not commands, they are examples of application. Some situations are so difficult to fully comprehend that we may in fact be wise just to follow the example. But the issue to be addressed is how to love others as Jesus loved us in each situation. That's something very difficult to do — will often result in different actions by different people, each of whom is trying to apply the same principle. Which is why only God can judge us — since only He knows our heart and knows what is truly consistent with his model of love.

Loving as Jesus loved can only be lived out in current time — neither the first century nor the 21st century is what is critical — but rather the context and the people with whom we are interacting at the moment. That is where we must apply the principle.