Theology is never just an idea.

Every theology eventually becomes behavior. Every pattern of behavior eventually bears fruit.

By Their Fruits: Testing Theology asks a simple question:
What if theology should be accountable for the lives it shapes?

So far, we've talked a lot about good fruit and bad fruit. We've asked what happens when theology helps people flourish and what happens when it leaves people frightened, ashamed, diminished, excluded, or harmed.

Which is useful.

It's also considerably neater than real life. Because sometimes the same theology produces both.

Sometimes a belief gives one person hope and leaves another terrified. Sometimes it creates a community where people experience genuine belonging while making absolutely certain other people know they don't belong. Sometimes people will tell you, quite sincerely, that a theology saved their life while someone else will tell you, just as sincerely, that recovering from that same theology saved theirs.

So now what?

If we're serious about treating the fruit as evidence, we don't get to ignore the evidence just because it refuses to line up nicely.

There's a temptation in a series called “By Their Fruits” to imagine theology as an orchard with two baskets. Good fruit goes over here. Bad fruit goes over there. Count the apples, do a little theological arithmetic, and whichever basket is heavier wins.

Wouldn't that be convenient?

Unfortunately, human beings have once again refused to organize themselves in a way that makes theology easy.

Take a church with a very traditional theology of marriage and gender. People inside that church may experience deep community, lifelong friendships, support during illness, meals when somebody dies, help when the rent is due, and a genuine sense that they are loved and known.

That's real fruit.

The same theology may also teach women that leadership belongs primarily to men, tell LGBTQ+ people that loving relationships available to everyone else are forbidden to them, and convince teenagers that something fundamental about themselves is unacceptable to God.

That's real fruit too.

Behavioral Theology doesn't get to pick whichever set of stories supports the conclusion we already wanted. We have to account for all the fruit.

This is where things get interesting. Because one of the easiest defenses of harmful theology is pointing to all the people it helped.

“My church teaches that, and we're some of the most loving people you'll ever meet.”
Maybe you are.

“My faith gave me purpose.”
I believe you.

“This theology held my family together.”
That's worth taking seriously.

None of those experiences become false simply because somebody else was harmed by the same theology. But the reverse is also true. The good fruit doesn't make the bad fruit disappear.

If a theology gives 100 people a strong sense of community while teaching five people that they are fundamentally disordered, those five people aren't theological rounding errors. You don't get to put 100 happy testimonies on one side of the scale and five wounded people on the other and announce that God wins by 95.

Human flourishing isn't a customer satisfaction survey.

And this is where simple counting really breaks down.

Suppose a theology makes a community feel safe, stable, and united because everyone knows exactly who belongs and exactly what everyone is supposed to believe.

That's a kind of good fruit.

But what if that unity depends upon somebody else being excluded? Now we have to ask a harder question: Is the good fruit being produced by the bad fruit?

Now, let’s be clear, that’s different from saying every benefit is secretly harmful. Sometimes theology genuinely does produce good things alongside harmful ones. But sometimes what looks like good fruit from the center looks very different from the margins.

A community can experience tremendous unity because it has agreed on who the outsiders are.

A marriage can appear remarkably stable because one partner has been taught that leaving is sinful.

A church can have very little conflict because questioning authority carries consequences.

Those aren't hypothetical problems. They're reminders that fruit needs interpretation. Sometimes “unity” is belonging. Sometimes it's conformity with excellent branding.

This is also why we keep coming back to the question of who gets to testify, because where you stand in relation to a theology can change what its fruit looks like.

A theology of male headship probably feels different from the pulpit than it does from the pew. A theology condemning same-sex relationships looks different when it's an abstract question in a Bible study than when you're the teenager sitting there trying very hard not to let anyone discover they're talking about you.

The people benefiting from a system aren't necessarily lying about the good they experience. But neither are the people being harmed by it.

Both are evidence.

And if we're doing Behavioral Theology seriously, we need to resist the temptation to resolve that tension by deciding beforehand which witnesses count.

Here's where I think Behavioral Theology needs some humility. Mixed fruit doesn't always give us an immediate verdict. Sometimes it gives us a question.

Why does this theology seem to help these people and harm those people? Is the harm accidental, or does it follow logically from the belief itself? Can we preserve what is life-giving without preserving what is harmful? Does the theology need to be abandoned, or does it need to be rethought?

Those questions aren't evasions. They're the work.

Behavioral Theology isn't supposed to give us a shortcut around thinking. If anything, it makes thinking harder because we're no longer allowed to tidy up the evidence before examining it. And sometimes the answer may be that we don't know yet.

That's okay.

“I don't know” is considerably more useful theology than “I already know, so your experience doesn't count.”

This may be the most hopeful part of mixed fruit. Discovering bad fruit doesn't necessarily mean burning down everything that ever grew around a theology.

Maybe people found genuine community there.
Keep the community.

Maybe they learned generosity.
Keep the generosity.

Maybe the theology gave people courage during grief, a language for hope, or a reason to show up for their neighbors.
For God's sake, keep those things.

But don't confuse the good things that grew there with proof that every root underneath them must therefore be healthy. Sometimes faithfulness means learning that something beautiful grew in imperfect soil.

And sometimes it means asking whether we can grow that beautiful thing without keeping the poison in the ground.

When the fruit is mixed, the questions we've been asking become even more important:

* What kind of people does it produce?
* What kind of communities does it create?
* Who benefits?
* Who is harmed?
* Does it bear the fruit of love, justice, mercy, and human flourishing?

But this week, add a few more.

*Are the benefits and harms distributed equally?
*Does somebody else's harm make my benefit possible?
*Can we preserve the good fruit without preserving the theology that produces the bad?

Mixed fruit doesn't make the Fruit Test useless. It makes the test necessary.

Think about a theology that has genuinely helped you. Not one you already dislike. Pick something you value. Something that gave you comfort, meaning, community, hope, or direction.

Then ask a question that may be a little uncomfortable:
Did everyone experience this theology the way I did?

Don't assume the answer is no. Don't assume it's yes.

Go looking.

Listen to people who stood somewhere different in relation to that theology. Pay attention to what they say it produced in their lives. And if their experience is different from yours, resist the urge to explain the difference away.

Your good fruit is still real.

So is theirs.

And if we're going to let the fruit talk back to our theology, we don't get to listen only when all the fruit agrees with us.