Conviction, Compassion, & Compromise

Revelation 2:12-17

Introduction

One of the negatives of the internet is that famous quotes have become lost and almost untrustworthy. I recently saw a quote that said, "Don't believe everything you read on the internet," attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Any line quoted often enough will get misattributed throughout the years. That’s true of this quote: “The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” It comes from a character in an 1893 Chicago Evening Post column about a fictional Irish bartender named Mr. Dooley. Since then, it has been applied to everything from its original context of journalism to the role of education, the role of the church, the role of the politician, and the role of art. It has had such enduring appeal primarily because it describes the strange ability of some things to both hurt and heal, comfort and discomfort, calm and distress people in different circumstances. This quote describes the balance of conviction and compassion.

Historically, the ch…