Black and White
Many years ago, I worked for a
supervisor who displayed a quote without an attribution that I found
fascinating, noting that great minds were preoccupied with ideas,
average minds talked of events, and small minded people talked about
other people. I still admire the quote and find it insightful, but I
have to admit, given my political bend, I was disappointed to
eventually learn that the quote is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt.
It would be so much easier in my own mind and heart if the quote that
I liked so much had come from an interesting someone who was known
for witty quips – someone more like Winston Churchill – or even
Dorothy Parker or Theodore Roosevelt! It requires less mental
work and less maturity on our part if things and people are simple
and easily dropped into a safe category. We don't want to have to
think about things to much, and we don't want to be burdened with
rethinking them. This is why the Weapons
of Influence work so well to trap us. Complex people with lots
of talent become harder to pigeon hole and categorize in our brains,
and our emotions cloud that process and make it far more complicated
as well. Our thoughts are so often captive to people we like.
A few years ago, on this blog, I'd
decided to post single, astute quotes from a wide variety of
different people including deists, a Catholic, and a couple of
theologians – none of whom held larger perspectives and general
views that were consistent with Evangelical Christianity. The quotes
were cutting and true, and they applied well to the discussion of
spiritual abuse, legalism, and liberty of thought as an American
which pointed out the limitations of Christian Reconstruction. I was
rather shocked at the mail I received, for people assumed that if I
agreed with one wise and accurate statement made by these
individuals, I had to believe everything that they ever said and
believed about everything. I've received similar mail in response to
my previous
blog post concerning The New Calvinism.
I definitely met my objective for
selecting these quotes – for I pushed people to think and
challenged their biases. I also challenged the simplicity of black
and white thought that evangelicals tend to follow (e.g., All
deists and Catholics are evil; therefore, they can never make a
meaningful statement on any subject.). There is also the
consideration of the change in people over time, growing older and
wiser, coming to new conclusions over time, and we are also subject
to the learning curve, because it takes time to study everything that
a person has written. A notable person or teacher may start out in
one tradition and change over time, making one era of their work
quite different from another. History may judge them on only their
worst or their best contributions, and the
evil that men do lives after them. But people are not that
simple, and we are always dependent on context. A single quote may
be valid and true, but the context may ruin it. Then there are
writers like Ayn Rand, who from my vantage and beliefs,
presents a fascinating example of contrasts, appreciating so many
good things (freedom, free capitalism, individualism), yet getting so
many other things so very wrong at the same time. Because I've
thoughtfully consider, challenge, and reaffirm my own beliefs, I find
that I can be discerning and tolerant of those ideas that don't match
my own. But how does one stay grounded?
Unity, Liberty and Love
Hermeneutics and a commitment to
Christian unity show their great worth when we guard against
oversimplifying people and ideas, plugging them into pre-defined
pigeon holes of our preference and remembering that people are
dynamic, changing and growing over time. When we look at dynamic
people as static representations of a doctrine and then try to place
them in pigeon holes of absolutes, we oversimplify. When we try to
find people who only believe all of the same things that we believe
in on all counts, not only do we oversimplfy, we seek uniformity.
Uniformity differs much from unity, as unity requires a degree of
maturity and self-assurance to tolerate the discomfort that arises as
well as the mental work we must do when we realize that we are not
all identical. It is easier when all things are uniform, but people
are not uniform creatures. We are complicated and diverse.
I discuss this in more length in
this post and at the top of the webpage in
the note to new readers, but the topic needs revisiting from time
to time. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans about eating
meat sacrificed to idols, giving us liberty to follow our
individual consciences in certain practices within Christianity that
were not mandatory while refraining from hindering others through our
own conduct. Paul spent a great deal of his time sorting out these
same kinds of issues with other churches, with the problems in
Galatia providing another example of this sorting out of what was
mandatory and what was left up to the individual to follow through
the guidance of the Word and the Spirit. In that same spirit of
thought, Augustine framed out his quotable statement:
In
essentials, unity.
In
non-essentials, liberty.
In
all things, love.
Avoiding Oversimplification
We now live in an age in Christianity
where we seek oversimplified reductions of people so that we can
categorize them, primarily because we are bombarded with all sorts of
different kinds of information. Influence
The Psychology of Persuasion provides an excellent
discussion of these tendencies, and the writings
of Neil Postman also touch on this material in a different way.
It's hard to keep up with it all, and we tend to like to take
shortcuts through that information. In many cases we must. We don't
re-think which way we have to turn the faucet to get hot water, and
we don't ponder why the sun rises every morning. We make assumptions
about such things, or we would get very little accomplished.
Thanks to men like John Hus and Martin
Luther who followed him, and many of the Reformers, Protestants enjoy
the reaffirmed concept of the “priesthood of all believers” and
the liberty in the Spirit about which Paul taught the early church.
We're not intended to be uniform but are called to unity. As
Christians, we are called to remain in unity concerning central
doctrine while also affirming liberty. This makes the job tougher,
because we can't just plunk people into a static category when we
consider their doctrine. There's also the learning curve, as we
cannot know all we need to know about a teacher or a ministry from
just a few encounters. As individuals grow and their interests
change, their message will change over time, so while we might like
what someone says today, but their original message may have been
very different. We may agree with them solidly one doctrine and
disagree heartily on others. We may be taken in by labels, using
them as a shortcut or rule of thumb, making the wrong assumptions
about all that a person teaches. This presents a host of potential
pitfalls for misunderstanding a teacher or ministry's position or
intent. People might be much more complex than we thought which may
become uncomfortable to us. And we might hold false expectations
that those leaders or teachers who are gifted in one area should or
are gifted in every area.
Add to that our human limitations of
cognitive biases, the ways in which our perceptions, our human
nature, and our own preferences shape how we see the world. I often
feel like a broken record repeating over and over that the most
amazing thing about the human mind is not so much it's ability to
realize things but its remarkable, creative ability to avoid ideas
that seem threatening to us. I've discussed cognitive dissonance in
recent posts, but there are lists and lists of distortions and biases
of thought that color how we see the world. None of us sees it
through pure objectivity. Wikipedia offers an almost overwhelmingly
long
list of human tendencies by which we oversimplify the world
through our own subjective side. We're all subject to error,
misunderstanding, and mistakes in our assumptions. Hopefully, over
time, we become less subject to the our human failings and grow into
greater mastery and maturity which age and experience enhances. If
we are humble, we can learn from our mistakes, admitting them to
others along the way. Changes will hopefully hallmark our growth.
Unity in the Essentials
I believe that it is possible to affirm
a fellow believer in the essential elements of the faith, those
things that are non-optional in terms of unity, the most notable one
being God's identity and how that contrasts with mankind or other
created beings. Another essential involves an understanding about
what salvation means and how it is mediated. I can stand in
agreement with a Roman Catholic on the identity of Christ, but I
don't stand in agreement with them on the details of how God bestows
salvation on us or the role that man plays in that process. Things
become more complicated with Protestants, not less, because we allow
for liberty and personal conviction which leads to the development of
varied doctrines, sometimes concerning the essentials. For example,
I stand in agreement concerning many doctrines of the Church with
many involved in the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
(CBMW), but I stand against them concerning the Doctrine of the
Eternal Subordination of the Son and concerning their claims that
their gender preferences are essential as opposed to intramural. I
have far more in common in terms of doctrine with CBMW than I do with
someone who is Catholic, but I agree with a Catholic far more
strongly about Christ's identity. And just to bake your noodle, I
suspect that I share nearly the same concept of Christ's identity
with Doug Phillips of Vision Forum more consistently than with CBMW
or Catholicism, though I stand at odds with so many other doctrines
taught by the group.
With the New Calvinists, many of whom
are involved in CBMW, I believe that their doctrines threaten and
chip away at central doctrine and the core beliefs that support those
doctrines. The various discussions of how God mediates salvation
which involves an understanding of justification, sanctification, and
what role human agency (our works) play in that mix speak to God's
identity, so they become very important in establishing and
supporting essential doctrine. Seventh Day Adventism in particular
presents unique challenges because they maintain other doctrines that
also chip away at what men like Walter
Martin consider to be orthodox and traditional Christianity (in
the Protestant sense), without perhaps a direct challenge, denying
central doctrine. Ravi Zacharias, the new editor of the late Dr.
Martin's seminal book on theological cults, was criticized
for his liberty to pray without naming Jesus when he participated
in an ecumenical event– so when we Protestants agree on the
essentials, we face an even greater challenge as to how those
essential ideas flesh out in practice in the proper and best way.
I stand strongly with those who speak
the truth about the abuses of power within groups like the Southern
Baptist Convention concerning gender and the tendency toward a
top-down, Roman Catholic like system where leaders seek to become the
new Protestant popes. I stand against the heavy handed measures
these groups have used to crush criticism. I stand with them
regarding their calling out of the abuses within aberrant patriarchal
homeschooling oriented special purpose religions that are passed off
as orthodox. But I do not stand with them when they make claims that
challenge essential Christian doctrine or defend doctrines that speak
to the doctrines that lend strong support the essentials. That's not a repudiation of individuals on a personal level but a matter of conviction and iron sharpening iron.
It would be easier and more pleasant to
share the same views on every matter, but like Martin Luther, I am
also captive to my conscience and the Word as I understand it. Under
liberty also, I reject some of the things that even Martin Luther
wrote and believed, because I am accountable to the Word and the
Spirit, not how Luther parsed it while facing the matters of his day
and in his time. Though my beliefs and how I understand the Bible in
all conscience may largely conform to a particular theology, I don't
feel the necessity to be bound to any Systematic Theology or system.
I will not answer to Arthur Pink, John
Calvin, or John Gill about how I followed Covenant Theology or
Calvinism, nor will I answer to Cyrus Scofield or Dwight L. Moody
about whether or not I followed Dispensationalism. My beliefs and
convictions don't fit in with any of the available options, as they
are framed out in the set theologies of Protestantism. (Gasp!)
Though I affirm Biblical truth in all three of the theologies, I do
not look to them first to understand doctrine, but rather look to
Scripture. And my understanding of these matters has changed and will likely change over time as I grow and continue to mature in the faith. I believe that I will stand to give an account of how I
lived my life, whether I followed the full counsel of the Word of God
and the intent of my heart with confidence towards God, how I did
that over time as I grew in wisdom, and will give that account to God
Himself. No Reformer will be there to make intercession for me,
pleading my case before God. I don't think I'm going to get a pass
if I trusted, lived out and repeated what a leader taught, especially
if my conscience convicted me that a particular belief of theirs was
problematic.
No Place or Time to Coast
In the world of ideas, especially
Christian ideas, we cannot afford to find a safe zone in which we can
coast. We have to be Bereans every day, always on guard and always
weighing ideas against the standard of truth. Human beings change
and grow, and we are fragile. We change and grow in our own journey and spiritual walk.
We are all open to falling into error when we take strong stands and
are not careful and wise about doing so. We love novelty. We love
to find systems and formulas to help us understand things and to help
us get things done more efficiently with fewer errors. But we have
to maintain perspective and remain grounded as we work through all of
these matters.
We risk deception when we stop. We
risk deception whenever we let someone else handle the burden of
thinking and discernment for us. But ultimately, we are responsible,
and the only safe place as a Christian comes through the dynamic
relationship we maintain through our knowledge of the Word in a
renewed mind and the illuminating guidance of the Holy Spirit. We
are lucky to find those discerning mentors who stand with us
consistently, but those relationships are not without their risks.
