Pastor, here’s how to answer “There’s always a middle ground.”

You’ve heard it in staff meetings, in elder rooms, maybe in your own sermon prep: “There’s always a middle ground.” We can keep the people over here happy and the people over there happy, land somewhere in the middle, and never have to choose. It sounds wise. It sounds peaceful. But it’s a sermon of the serpent, and it’s been quietly pulling pastors out of their convictions for years. Here’s what’s underneath it, and how I answer it.

What third wayism is

Third wayism treats the middle position as automatically the virtuous one. Political and moral neutrality become the default setting, so you never have to say that one thing is true and another is false. Sometimes we do it for pragmatic reasons: we want to reach everybody, so we stay neutral on everything.

Here’s the problem. This is relativism played out as neutrality, theological and political. It puts kindness above conversion, and it denies that there’s ever a time for choosing. But conviction requires a time to choose. There are things that are true and things that are false. There is good and there is evil.

The serpent’s question

Underneath “there’s always a middle ground” is the oldest lie in the garden, dressed up as humility: “Did God really say some things are good and some are evil?” The serpent didn’t ask Eve to hate God. He just invited her to stand somewhere between God’s word and his own, and decide for herself. That “reasonable middle” is where the fall happened.

Scripture doesn’t leave us a demilitarized zone between good and evil. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). Joshua didn’t offer Israel a third way. He said, “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15).

Step 1 — Recover what “third way” actually meant

I love Tim Keller. I’m probably one of the only people who actually read all of Center Church, and it’s about this thick. Keller was great at communicating that you can preach cosmic justice and care for the widow, the orphan, and justice in your city. That was the third way: not a refusal to choose, but a refusal to drop half of what the Bible cares about.

Unfortunately, his ideas have been retconned into a politically neutral movement that says, “We’re in the middle, we critique the left and the right,” except pragmatically it only ever punches one direction. You can critique both the left and the right. Just do it honestly. And remember that Keller wrote in a more neutral era, when the difference between parties was closer to a tax bracket. The divide is far wider now. When the lines are drawn that far apart, your fence may be sitting somewhere else entirely. The middle is often the wrong answer.

Step 2 — Ask whether your middle is a conviction or an escape hatch

Be honest with yourself here. A lot of the time, third wayism is just a ripcord: “I don’t have political convictions, so I’ll pull the ripcord of the middle.” There’s an Anabaptist streak in it, too, the instinct to remove yourself from public life as if you’re above it. I’ve seen it used as a political tool to pull Christians out of politics entirely.

So ask the question of your own heart: am I in the middle because Scripture led me here, or because it’s the place where nobody gets mad at me?

Step 3 — Let your theology inform your polity

God sets us in families. He sets us in nations. He “marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands” (Acts 17:26). Your theology should inform your polity, and it should inform your vote. That doesn’t mean endorsing a party from the pulpit. It means teaching your people how what they believe about God, people, sin, and justice shapes how they live as citizens.

We live in a season of so much epistemological confusion that people don’t know what they believe or why. That’s exactly when the church can’t hide in the middle. God has given us explicit truth we can live by.

Step 4 — Call balls and strikes

From the pulpit, we should be calling balls and strikes, left and right, with the same Bible. That takes courage and it takes grace. It doesn’t take a mushy middle. Most of the time, if there’s nuance, the nuance will lead you to a conclusion. That’s what nuance is for. If you just live in the nuance all the time, it’s very hard to take forward steps in life, and very hard to lead a church anywhere.

Reject the retconning of third wayism, and reject the idea that there’s always a middle when, frankly, many times there isn’t. Be a pastor full of conviction, truth, and grace, and teach the truth whether people like it or not. Nuance should lead you to a destination, not leave you living in the gray forever.