I read this quote today on Phil Baker's blog
"In any fairly large and talkative community such as a university there is always the danger that those who think alike should gravitate together into coteries where they will henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumour that the outsiders say thus and thus. The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion are embittered by the group hostility. Each group hears not the best, but the worst, that the other group can say. In the Socratic all this is changed. Here a man could get the case for Christianity without all the paraphenalia of pietism and the case against it without the irrelevent sansculottisme of our common anti-God weeklies. At the very least we helped to civilize each other..."
The part that intrests me is: "...those who think alike should gravitate together into coteries where they will henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumour that the outsiders say thus and thus. The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion are embittered by the group hostility. Each group hears not the best, but the worst, that the other group can say..."
How much this can reflect in the church. We sit together in churches that agree with our theology and confirm our own ideas. We are only occasionally challenged by a thought that might be different to ours and then the volume of our opposition to the view easily defeats the idea. We are then free to go back to thinking the way we are most comfortable!
The other aspect is we talk and preach about rumor of opinions, (Post Modernism a case in point) we oppose a view we think that people have, all to make sure we continue to hold to the version of truth that we like.
How can we allow ourselves the freedom to be challenged and the grace to understand that we do not know everything about God? The the courage to walk in honest and open learning, the rest of our days?
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