Veritas numquam perit

Note: see my previous post below, or click here.

A couple of other things that I would pray for Godbloggers if I actually did pray for Godbloggers:

Ears to Hear

We don’t seem to do a very good job of listening to one another; I am no exception. There are times when I am reading a post that I am struck by an idea and chase it wherever it leads, all the while continue to “read” the post in front of me. (We all tend to do the same thing when in a conversation or argument: we’re thinking about what we’ll say as soon as the other person shuts up.) Then I either write my own post or enter a comment that is only tangentially connected to the original post. Whatever the author was actually saying turns out to be just a springboard for my own vain thoughts, and I lose the value of another’s input.

Perhaps even more frequent - and more tragic - is when someone disagrees with us on our blog and writes a comment to that effect. We are prone to respond defensively to criticism, whether it is constructive or not, offered in love or not. We do not always give their point of view a proper hearing, feeling offended instead and responding with a dismissive retort. And the discussion goes downhill from there.

Of course, we also hijack one another’s comments section. Somehow we cannot discipline ourselves to follow the lead of the blogger and instead take the discussion off in our own direction, usually to our favorite little hobby horse or pet peeve. When we do that, however, we discourage and frustrate an in-depth exploration of that issue or idea the author initially put before us. It is as if we ignore her points in order to make our own. Another opportunity to learn is lost.

We like the sound of our own voice; we like to see our own words on the screen before us. After all, who can say it as well as me? Which leads to my last and, perhaps, most important non-prayer for the Blogdom:

Humility

Whether we are or not, we often come across as arrogant and having an inflated sense of our own importance. Our blogs sometimes are ethereal examples of Paul’s warning: “Knowledges makes arrogant” (1 Cor 8:1 c). Humility, says James Sire, is a virtue without which “every virtue begins to become a vice.” In his section on intellectual virtues in Habits of the Mind, he writes,

Lack of humility - arrogance - is, in fact, one of the most frequent charges against intellectuals . . . The real problem, however, is not the charge that you are arrogant but the distinct possibility that you actually are.”

Quoting Weaver, he continues:

‘What do you desire? Vain glory? Profit? Then you are but a pseudo-intellectual.’ We must take our cue from the great Christan intellectuals of the past: They knew ‘that the proud theologian was a living contradiction in terms.’”

Middleton:

It’s not the childlike asking of questions or the honest admission of doubt that will get you into trouble with God. It’s the unstinting belief, the confidence, the certainty that you - that I - have all the answers, either because we’re smart, or because we’re honest, or because we’re scientific, or because we’re Christians, or because we have a Reformational worldview.”

It does no injustice to Middleton to add, “or because we have a Dispensational theology, an Arminian perspective, a Kingdom Theological approach, or any other system of doctrine that forms our worldview.” One of the best lessons I learned in seminary was Dr. Bruce Demarest first presenting and then dismantling Covenant, Dispensational, Kingdom, and Promise-Fulfillment theologies in order. The lesson? No system of theology can do justice to all the material; all fall short and either distort or omit critical passages or principles. Therefore, hold your theology firmly but gently: you are undoubtedly wrong at many points.

(Dr. Demarest, by the way, was one of the more humble men I have ever met. Although he has a remarkable mind and trained under F.F. Bruce to gain his doctorate in New Testament, he never held it with an attitude of superiority - even when some Moody Bible Institute students verbally attacked and ridiculed him in class. I caught a glimpse of Christ through him.)

Still borrowing from Sire, who quotes Neuhaus:

Few things have contributed so powerfully to the unbelief of the modern and postmodern world as the pretension of Christians to know more than we do . . . If Christians exhibited more iintellectual patience, modesty, curiosity, and sense of adventure, there would be fewer atheists in the world, both of the rationalist and the postmodern varieties.”

Don’t get off on election here: his point is valid and important. We are not very attractive at times, neither to unbelievers nor to one another. One more quote:

Describing the state of knowledge centuries ago, Thomas Aquinas said, ‘No philosopher has ever been able completely to know the essence of even a single fly.’ He was right then. And Lewis Thomas is right in our age: ‘We do not understand a flea.’”

Why we act as though it is otherwise is a reflection of our immaturity. There are, of course, many things that we can know with certainty: they are the declarative statements of the Bible. But the moment we venture into interpretation, we should take with us ample caveats and sufficient humility to allow that we might be wrong.

We do not possess omniscience. We have but a smattering of wisdom. We have much to learn, even from the most unlikely of sources. If we do not learn, if we cut ourselves off from those who “have nothing to say to us” because they are from a different tradition, then we have no one but ourselves to thank for our continuing ignorance and inevitable stagnation. We do not walk in wisdom when we do so.

I have written elsewhere about my concerns that too many unqualified people are making dogmatic, general statements about matters they do not fully understand. In some ways, this is a counter-balance to that post. We do need to be discerning but we should never dismiss someone’s observations without having first listened. All deserve to be heard, although not all should be given the same authority when they speak. We must be discerning enough to reject what is false, but humble enough to admit when they are correct and we are wrong.