April 10, 2015
Inventing Controversy
Earlier this week our county
commissioners re-implemented having a time of prayer prior to their meetings.
The newspaper reporter covering the meeting chose not to report on the entire
meeting, but instead wrote only about the issue of prayer. While half of her
article was about the commissioner’s reasoning for implementing prayer, the
other half revisited the long historical debate over prayer, citing different
courts and the appeals. Even though a 5-4 decision in the Supreme Court settled
the issue to allow prayer, the reporter highlighted the dissenting view of
liberal Justice Kagan. Rather than simply reporting local news, the reporter went
to great effort to arm those who may object to prayer with ammunition to attack
the commissioner’s decision and in essence, lay the groundwork for controversy.
Whether in society, or in the church, Paul’s warning is applicable. “But avoid
foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law,
because these are unprofitable and useless. Warn a divisive
person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do
with him. You may be sure that such a man is warped and
sinful; he is self–condemned” (Titus 3:9-11 NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----We should have paid attention to Paul. Tom Morris, Ph.D, in his contribution to the “For Dummies” series, Philosophy for Dummies, wrote about a concept he called “conservation of belief” explaining why people will believe something even in the face of compelling evidence otherwise. That we can only do what we know how to do, relate to things the way our minds have learned to relate, and even reason about things in the manners our minds have trained to think is kind of like a shelter kind of like a cage. We have no other ways to do things, relate to stuff, reason out solutions, etc. than what we‘ve come to know. So, it‘s understandable that the mind is quite protective about what it has come to know and believe. Our minds are seas of information, perceptions, and memories of all types which would otherwise mix like chaotically boiling alphabet soup if the mind does not come to accept some manner of structured formation about the most of it.
-----I was quite gleeful to read Dr. Morris‘ conservation of belief theorem. When I was faced with rebuilding my mental insides to escape and bury manic-depression forever, I surmised this concept of how the mind defends its ideas. Of course, not being a PH.D in anything except the general Idiodyssey of my own life, I wasn’t about to think I knew what I surmised until I read a Ph.D of thinking saying something similar. But in tunneling out of my manic-depressive state, I made much use of the concept anyhow, just because it worked. I was able to take courage in knowing better ways of doing things would form in me proportionately to my propensity for letting loose of whatever foolishness I recently discovered. But. At the beginning of this process, in fact, quite soon after I had pulled the barrel of that Mauser from between my eyes, I swept everything I believed off my conscious table except one certain keeper, Jesus Christ, the Word.
-----It is interesting how many units of ideas, thoughts, perceptions, feelings, etc. makes the mind, and how independently many seem to exist within, how dependent are others, and how they form various groupings which all make up a culture of the soul. While overcoming my manic-depression, I noticed people together form culture like all these mental units form personality and character. I’ve carefully observed and studied this similarity over the decades since. And at times I have been beside myself with frustration over many simple ways and opportunities we as a people have had to derail the crafts of the demonic gremlins picking our once great, Christian culture apart and ruining its core beliefs.
-----They did it just the way I reshaped mine. They first convinced a critical mass(remember the flower children?) that conserving beliefs was not right. “Let it all loose, man.“ Your own reality was worth more. I held onto Jesus for my own reality. Most of them held onto themselves. What can be expected besides frustration for the many of us who yet hold fast to Jesus while we watch frenzied insanity destroy cultural beliefs we try to conserve? We must understand that, although they have formed new beliefs of their own to conserve, the possibility of repairing culture starts with offending their propensity to conserve rather than just battling their misguided beliefs. After all, that’s what holds minds around frameworks - conservation. Without being from Christ the conservator, all conservation of belief will eventually become vapor in the wind, thank God!
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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