Tried With Fire

In Unfollow , when Megan Phelps-Roper and her sister, Grace, left the Westboro Baptist Church and, by extension, their family, one of their struggles was with their relationship. They loved and supported one another, but they never learned how to disagree. In most families, kids learn to compromise and work things out, but not so in their family. Total agreement was expected. "We had never learned to "agree to disagree ," because to church members, such a concept was blasphemous. Can two walk together, except they be agreed? What communion hath light with darkness?"  At Westboro,  every decision had moral implications. Every question had a single correct answer. Miscommunication required blame, and mistakes required punishment. My sister and I knew how to cajole, issue ultimatums, attribute ill motives, and assign moral failure to the other party in a dispute, but we couldn't compromise and we couldn't move forward without a resolution as to which one of...

This is an updated version of a post I wrote over three years ago about Christian "experts" who are very free in dispensing their advice to the rest of us. If anything, the number of influencers has only grown thanks to the Internet. Not all are bad, and some are quite helpful. But just because there is an influencer out there does not obligate me to listen or agree.  In  Pride and Prejudice , Jane Austen has created a character who is both irritating and amusing - Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She is the epitome of the bossy and nosy neighbor, and her rank and wealth give her the right to be so. As the owner of a large estate, anyone who is economically dependent on her patronage needs to stay in her good graces because she holds the pursestrings. Yet, Austen's dry wit makes it plain to the reader that Lady Catherine's omniscience exists only in her own mind. Here are a few examples of how she advises those who have the misfortune of not being as enlightened a...

I'm still listening/reading Thinking Fast and Slow. I probably need to go back and read the book more slowly because almost every aspect of how we think gets tackled.  I just finished the section on the Illusion of Pundits in which the validity of so-called experts (political, economic, etc.) comes under scrutiny. They are not as expert as they think they are or we want to believe. In a study of pundits, Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, found out that: "experts resisted admitting that they had been wrong, and when they were compelled to admit error, they had a large collection of excuses: they had been wrong only in their timing, an unforeseeable event had intervened, or they had been wrong but for the right reasons. Experts are just human in the end. They are dazzled by their own brilliance and hate to be wrong. Experts are led astray not by what they believe, but by how they think, says Tetlock. He uses the terminology from Isaiah Berl...

When emotions run high and opinions are strong, social media reflects that. The tweets and statuses may be preaching to the choir or not. They may disperse into the ether without making a blip on anyone's consciousness, or they could potentially wound a fellow saint. As I've seen the volleys go back and forth even yesterday, it saddens me. But lest I point the finger out there, have I ever given any indication that I would: - Disrespect or mock a fellow believer if I found out that we disagreed and pressure them to agree with me? - Be unwilling to listen? Not care enough to learn more and try to understand where someone is coming from even if the disagreement still stands? - Be the last person they would go to because of lack of empathy/sympathy? God forgive me if I have done so, and I would ask the same of you, my brothers and sisters. The interaction among opposing sides is getting less and less civil in the culture at large, and it is rubbing off on us. And yet th...

[E]xtra degrees of charity and empathy are necessary in public discussion and debate. At the moment, what we have instead are extra degrees of anger and contempt. David French This quote is from an article by David French at National Review on the gun control debate that is raging after the  school shooting in Florida last week. He writes that if we cannot stop demonizing one another, this could tear our nation apart. I agree. The animosity towards one's opposing side has only grown since the 2016 election. I've seen this on social media in general and among those who profess Christ's name, which grieves me even more. Does strong disagreement justify this behavior? Would we use the same language and attitude toward a fellow Christian face-to-face as we would to a stranger on Twitter? If this is a fellow believer, we are called to love them as someone for whom Christ has died. For the unbeliever, he/she is our neighbor. If we won't acknowledge that, we are called to ...

I was just thinking about this very thing when this pic providentially showed up on a friend's FB wall. (Thank you, Brandi!) If I had my druthers, I would be part of a group of Christians who regularly discussed difficult topics. Not for the sake of pressuring consensus or to vent but to ask hard questions and not assume there are easy answers. I've been able to find this to a certain degree online. It is harder face-to-face, which is really where my heart is. It seems that discussing our place in the public square is not exactly a favorite topic among Christians. We don't want to start arguments. We don't want to disagree, but how can we challenge one another to make doctrine in the pew a matter of practical Christian ethics if we don't talk about these things? I also wonder if we mistakenly put consensus and conformity in the place of unity in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Then it is easier to norm and assume we all vote the same, have the same educational ...

Growing up, I was very compliant for the most part. I did not make waves, and I did not ask questions, unlike Question Quigley. It may have been part of my ethnic culture or just my personality, but I never doubted what I was taught, whether it was in the classroom or from the pulpit. It also made life easier. In school, I was a model student who dutifully regurgitated the material for the sake of the grade. (Whether that was really learning is another matter.) In the church, I was a model sheep who went along with the rest of the herd, so there were no awkward conversations over doctrinal disagreements. But the time came when I had to ask some hard questions. Circumstances forced me to examine what I believed and why I believed it, and my belief system was found wanting. This resulted in a shift from my previous theological position, and for the first time in my life, I found myself at odds with other believers. Read the rest of the post here.