There's always (at least) two things going on in any conversation. The information exchanged in a conversation is either true or untrue, and a person's ability to talk about the truth or falsity of a claim varies on how honest that person is willing to be. We see this all the time in relationships, but it is especially painful when applied to philosophy and doctrine.
As best I understand the situation, in matters of doctrine, it looks something like this: there is true doctrine, false doctrine, humble people, and proud people. When I say "true" and "false" here, I mean simply that the doctrine is either correct, accurate, and true, regardless of whether or not we know that it is true; or the doctrine is NOT correct, accurate, or true, and could be our best understanding of reality currently, but is NOT true. This brings up an issue of epistemology, which I'm not at all qualified to try to explain or deal with here, but understand what I mean for this particular entry. Additionally, when I say "humble" and "proud", I simply mean that a humble person is always willing to be wrong, because she wants to know what is true, and a proud person is not willing to consider whether or not he is wrong, for any number of reasons. Now, there are many scales of accurate, inaccurate, humility, and pride, and lots of reasons for doctrine being untrue and people being proud, but the reasons for not having true belief or humility is not my topic. I just want to describe this situation. Think about this:
A humble person with true doctrine is what we're all aiming for. As Christians, we all want to know and believe what is true, and always be ready to have God show us how we're wrong about something. We all want to know who God is, and be able to tell everyone we know about Christ's sacrifice in a true and convincing way, so we can all live happily ever after, unto ages of ages.
But I don't know anyone no one is like that perfectly. Except Christ, of course, who I was not blessed to know when He walked the earth. When I see people that are more humble and have better doctrine than me, I respect them more instantly, and I bet you do too! But what we usually have are the other three options.
We get proud people with true doctrine. Now, these people aren't always arrogant jerks who have grown up in Bible school and went to seminary and have read all the church fathers, saints, other religion's books, atheists, and philosophers, and with their logical training can argue against you (and the strands of theology that you're trying to tie together) up the wazoo until you have to concede or storm off, hurt and confused. Not all these people want to destroy your faith for their own glory. No, there's lots of people who are nice, too, but just unwilling to budge from what they've learned. And there's people that are passionate about what they believe, but have never heard an objection to some premise of their faith, and have built their life or ministry off that false premise. Change is hard, and when we're talking about pride, I mean anything less than perfect humility. It hurts to admit when you're wrong, especially if you've been living a certain way your entire life. Personally, I need to learn to have more compassion on people when they're in this position. In the heat of a discussion, I forget that everyone has grown up learning something, and not everything can be right - including what I grew up knowing.
There's also humble people with false doctrine. I've met a lot of people who are simple, fun-loving, growing Christians. Some of them are non-denominational Christians with non-aggressive personalities, and simply don't want to push their beliefs on other people, or have to have awkward doctrinal conversations. Some of them are Catholics who are used to hearing the jokes about priests molesting boys, used to having the occasional person joke about indulgences and the crusades, and just don't want to have to fight anyone about weird history things. Some of them are Protestants that don't believe homosexuality is right, but their friend in the same congregation believes it's alright, but they don't know how to back it up, since both of them have their verses ready to pull out to support their side, but don't want to have to duel over the issue. I've definitely been in situations where I think what a person is so passionately telling someone else is not totally Biblical, or is not something that never seemed to be an issue for the church fathers, or may not be logically valid, but, come on. Do I really going to fight someone when my information may just be wrong too? Will it hurt our friendships if I just want to explore the idea? As a good friend of mine put it recently, "I don't want to fight people. I need them!" However, we still have an issue over whether or not the claims are true. How can we ever get to that issue if we are afraid our friendships won't survive?
Then, worst of all, there's proud people with false doctrine. No one wants to be in this boat. No one wants to be so proud that they won't change their mind, even when they're shown that their argument is fallacious, or that their idea is historically inaccurate, or that scriptures and church fathers all have evidence against such a position. I wonder how often I'm like this? I never want to be, of course, but certainly there's a very good chance that some of my ideas about theology are simply inaccurate! I would absolutely appreciate it if a friend took me aside and told me, "Jann, I know you think that killing orphans is a good idea, but... do you think we can talk about it? I'm pretty sure this isn't a good thing to do."
And so, the relationship between truth and humility realizes in this way - I must be humble in order to know truth, and God is truth. I must be humble enough to honestly admit and change when I am wrong, or humble enough to do my best to offer my thoughts and opinions to others when it's relevant to do so. My growth and understanding is for the benefit of others as well as myself, because I am a cog in a machine, a single color in a painting, a step on a staircase - I don't exist in a bubble! I exist in a community of people, am born into a family, am surrounded by co-workers and friends. I must be humble enough to learn my flaws and fix myself, and to discard untruths wherever they appear. No amount of untruth is acceptable. No amount of sin is acceptable. So, can't we all just be humble and truth-seeking? And forgive when people aren't quite there yet? Do we not turn the other cheek because fighting back, in this sense, is not helpful, but destructive?
So, I've noticed that this sort of "square of opposition" is a way to think about doctrine and people. It's helpful tool for self-analysis, since it asks the question, "Which of these describe you?" How you answer (honestly) inevitably guides you directly to a healthy spiritual life. It kind of blows my mind that one could be barred from understanding truth because they aren't humble enough. It is true that one must learn to be wrong to learn what's true, so if you're not humble, then you limit yourself in what you can understand. It seems that the world belongs to the meek in spirit, and that's the only way it can be! How crazy is that?
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