Disagreements

October 2nd, 2006

Bish Dave Bish has written a couple of blog posts on youthful passions (ie the tendency - particularly among the young, and I would suggest also among young men - to unhelpfully argue on doctrinal matters etc) and controversy. Firstly, if you haven’t read them already, go read them, they’re well worth it (especially if you’re a fellow reformed young man and thus almost certainly don’t have this aspect of your life properly sorted.)

I think the need to compulsively correct things all the time is part of what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 7:1-5:

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

Obviously, this passage is primarily about judging other peoples actions, rather than their theology, but it’s clearly not solely about that, for two reasons - firstly, you can’t really seperate actions from theology, and secondly the passage seems fairly clearly to imply some level of intellectual content in the last two verses (in that it involves people seeing clearly enough to be able to correct others). Obviously, the theology is primarily one that is directly concerned with specific actions, but that’s kind of inevitable given the Jewish context.

I guess one thing that this passage drives home for me is that a major part of the solution to youthful passions and controversy etc is simply to try hard to remember that I am a fallen human being, absolutely full of mistakes in theology for various motivations (to accomodate my sinfulness, to disagree with what’s popular/mainstream and thus make me feel that my uniqueness validates the godliness of my opinions or something). As Cromwell said “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

It made me think of one of the main things that my three years of theological study has led me to conclude. One major thing I realised as I began to study theology is that there isn’t a single theologian in history, other than those who are relatively recent (past couple hundred years maybe) and of the kind of theology that I’ve been influenced by, that doesn’t disagree with me on something that I believe quite strongly. Thing is, if everyone in history - other than those whose background is similar enough to me to make them blind in the same ways that I am - made big errors, then surely I can assume that I make big errors in my theology that I don’t know about.

I think that once you realise that someone else may possibly be right, or if not right, may well have spotted some flaw in your position that’ll help you to think through it better, it’s a whole lot easier to deal with controversy better. In some ways, having studied theology makes me more inclined to unhelpful debates/arguments than I was before (particularly given that I do actually know and understand more than the majority of people I talk to, which in some cases is something that’s hard), but I think in most ways it’s helped me realise that I haven’t got it all sorted, there’s a lot of question marks and I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past and may make them again, and I appreciate how other people hold different opinions as well. So I guess one solution is simply to read people you disagree with, and try hard to listen to them.

Obviously, there are some issues which are so important that controversy is, sadly, necessary. I’m not entirely sure how to tell the difference between that and another, but I think the best suggestion I heard was a speaker who suggested that all heresy etc was rooted in saying to Jesus “Yeah, Jesus, you’re quite good, you’re quite great, you’ve done some good stuff”, rather than “Jesus, you’re the epitome of good; you’re the absolute greatest there’s ever been or ever possible to be; all good stuff that’s ever been done is ultimately from you”. But that would be applied to a range of doctrinal positions. I think I’ll likely develop that idea in a later post.