The Importance Of Reading Authors With Whom You Disagree

      I have believed in Jesus Christ for almost three weeks past fifty years. During that time, God was very gracious to me. As I reflect, God's grace was extended to me long before I came to Christ, for which I am profoundly grateful.

     One of my blessings growing up, though my parents were decidedly not believers, was exposure to their habit of reading. My parents seemed always to be reading something, with my recollections being my dad blasting through a book daily. Taught to read by an older sister when he was only four years old, reading was my dad's escape from a sharecropper's life.

     At this point, I must recollect one of Mark Twain's sayings: "A man who does not read has no advantage over a man who cannot read." How right he was. This episode of my musings is a pitch for reading, but more than that. It is a pitch for reading even what you know in advance you will not much like, mainly works related to biblical and systematic theologies written by men whose persuasions and convictions differ from yours.

     Sadly, as a Baptist pastor for more than forty-five years, I have concluded, from many conversations, that most missionaries and pastors do not read much. And if they do, they tend to read unsubstantial works written only by authors they agree with. That is both sad and mistaken.

     Pastors and missionaries need to be widely read men. And we need to read for various reasons. We should read to clarify our positions. That is the first reason for reading widely. My first pastor was a man with convictions he refused to articulate. He did not refuse to answer my questions only, but also the questions of other Church members about the Bible and other matters.

     One of my favorite teachers in Bible college, I was saddened to discover years later, was a man of strong convictions that he could not defend because he was not widely read. He was a remarkable teacher. All of his students loved him in class. But after entering the pastorate, I learned from interacting with him that he was a man of deep convictions with shallow reasons for his convictions. This was disheartening, especially in light of my agreement with him. But I am persuaded that someone right for the wrong reasons is wrong!

     Another reason for being widely read concerns your understanding of those you disagree with. It is insufficient to disagree with those who are wrong, even if you do not sufficiently grasp the intricacies of their error.

     Most Baptist pastors and missionaries do not have much track record opposing Arminianism. Why not? It may be because their grasp of Arminianism is insufficient, and they do not comprehend how man-centered Arminianism is and its proximity to Pelagianism.

     Far more Baptist pastors rail against Calvinism but do so without having read Calvinist authors. The result, of course, is childish caricatures of Calvinism that men who have investigated Calvinism easily see through.

     If you are confident your understanding of Scripture on a point of doctrine is accurate, you will profit from reading diverse positions written by thoughtful men who disagree with you. It will clarify the position you disagree with and help you articulate your position more clearly.

     I believe it helps to know what you are talking about, and strongly held, but unsupported positions bolstered by little more than vehemence are unpersuasive. Further, I am persuaded that not only are readers leaders, but leaders are readers, and a Gospel minister who is not a devoted and prolific reader needs to find another line of work!

"Situational Awareness"

     Christians are caught up in a spiritual conflict. The battleground of the war is the believer's thought life, the mind. The enemy are resolute in their determination to persuade us of that which is impossible for them to achieve, to separate us from the love of Christ, Romans 8.35.

     Failing to do that, our spiritual enemy displays ruthlessness in their determination to discourage us by one means or another, frequently achieving this by manipulating Christians-in-name-only friends and acquaintances who betray us, accuse us, undermine us, and who knows what else?

     The goal, of course, is to disparage the cause of Christ and create division in the body of Christ, in the hope that the individual will become so despondent he will give up, quit, or leave. Most Christians have developed enough what is termed in the military 'situational awareness' that they recognize spiritual opposition for what it is and resist it. No lost individual and too many infantile believers succumb because 'situational awareness' is beyond them. They either cannot or will not look unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith.

     The result? Discouraged, despondent, and without hope, they make crucial decisions without seeking wise counsel (with those decisions frequently resulting in irretrievable loss of opportunity or recourse). Sometimes the counsel of friends is sought. At other times, the counsel of parents is sought. Almost never is the counsel of a seasoned spiritual leader sought ... or followed.

     How is one to be prepared for service to the Savior if those men given by the Savior are left uninformed and outside the troubled person's decision loop? After all, a good portion of equipping for the work of the ministry is showing how to deal with ongoing spiritual opposition and conflict.

     The result is discouragement and defeat resulting from a lack of awareness of how normal and usual a person's issues are (1 Cor 10.13), the forces that are in play (Eph 6.10-18), and the fatal error that is often made by granting to the enemy what they have sought all along, a break of fellowship, a departure, a cut and run decision that is the opposite of God's will and exactly in line with the demons' objective when organizing the attack against that person.

     When the apostle wrote First John 2.19 the lines were more clearly drawn than they are in our day ("They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.")

     But John's declaration was not the assertion of any new principle. A thousand years earlier Solomon, in Proverbs 21.16, wrote, "The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead."

     We who have a relationship with God do not always have a storehouse of scripture knowledge, but we more often than not have some amount of situational awareness. We know we are involved in a spiritual conflict and that we are outmatched, wholly dependent upon the grace of God and the means of grace to be equipped to resist the devil so he will flee from us. 

     The goal? To resist the enemy's push against us. To refuse to flee when we know the goal is to get us away, to separate us from, and to isolate us from those in our lives who are charged by God to minister to our most significant needs.

     Notable men are of the opinion that the departure from a congregation is evidence of a lost condition. Not all are agreed. But no would rightly disagrees with the conclusion that to flee is not helpful, to run is not healthy, to bail out is contraindicated, because there is no possible way a child of God can be faithful by being unfaithful, can stand fast by cutting and running.

     The long term remedy that should ever be employed? Seek always to maintain 'situational awareness.' Ask yourself and responsible and spiritual mature leaders who are Bible students what God wants you to do and what He would never not want you to do.

     'Situational awareness' is crucial. You must always seek to understand your situation, the goal of the enemy in your life, the desire of God for your life, so you can seek God's wisdom, God's grace, and the determination not to flee when you should stay or stay when it is God's will that you leave.

“An Important Metaphor To Understand”

 

Sometimes, God graciously reveals to you some of the lengths He has gone to teach you needful things. At this stage of my life and ministry, I am grateful to God for reminding me of His patience. This is but one example.

If my memory serves me correctly (and memory is never a catalog of events and facts in the order in which they occurred or were experienced, but a series of impressions and images), He first began to teach me about the importance of metaphors when I was a student at Madras High School in Madras, Oregon.

If memory serves me correctly, it was a speech class taught by Miss Farrar. I did not enjoy the class very much; I only remembered one classmate who is, to this day, a Facebook friend. I certainly did not learn much, overwhelmed by pride and insecurities that were the norm for most boys my age. Had I paid attention, I might have learned about figures of speech, specifically metaphors and similes. Sadly, I did not.

The next opportunity given to me to learn how to communicate more effectively was in the United States Air Force Academy and an English class using the Scribner Handbook of English, written by Albert H. Marquardt and Frederick G. Cassidy. It is a wonderful tool that is well-suited for those who must communicate effectively without much interest in the actual structure and use of the English language. Again, I learned nothing about metaphors and similes while using them in everyday conversation.

The 3^rd and 4^th opportunities given to me were while enrolled in hearing school at Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon. Not much appreciated by engineering students, it is crucial for those enrolled in STEM courses to learn how to communicate effectively to a broader audience of non-technical people. The two English courses I was required to take were taught by men who did not take their topic seriously. Both courses were tragically missed opportunities; the professors told us during the initial class session that attendance was not required until the day of the final exam. Since attendance was not required, I attended no classes and learned nothing. For both courses, I showed up on the day of the final exam to inform the professor what grade I wanted them to give me, with one professor demanding a reason why he should give me an A for the course. “Because my parents pressure me to get good grades,” I told him. “That’s good enough for me,” he said, and I received an A in the course for doing nothing.

The 5^th opportunity given to me occurred after I had come to Christ and was enrolled in Bible college, taking a course from a missionary named Rosalie Hooge. She was a brilliant communicator, a well-prepared teacher, and a gracious Christian woman with much to offer. In retrospect, I deeply regret not seizing upon the opportunity afforded by such an excellent instructor.

I am an inveterate reader, which enabled me to gain valuable insight into the usefulness of similes and metaphors when communicating. I all my appetite for reading to growing up in the home of a mother and father who were readers, with my dad having a voracious appetite for books. His example was more caught by me than taught to me.

I wonder what might have been had I any appreciation for God’s plan for my life, to be called into the Gospel ministry, to spend a half-century declaring the unsearchable riches of Christ, to writing books, tracts, and brochures. How many wasted opportunities do you have to become a more effective and practical Christian?

Not that I have no appreciation for metaphors and similes, but that my facility with them might have been far more well-developed, and I seized upon the many opportunities God gave me. So, what is a metaphor? The Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary defines metaphor as “a transferring to one-word the sins of another. A figure of speech in which one thing is likened to another, different thing by being spoken of as if it were that other; implied comparison, in which a word or phrase ordinarily and primarily used of one thing is applied to another.”[1]

Not that I did not appreciate the significance of metaphors in New Testament interpretation. But there are times when someone who has been as neglectful as I was fails to appreciate the importance and relevance of language tools God gave us to help us understand significant truths. Such is the case with the body metaphor used by the apostle Paul in the New Testament.

I write all this to impress upon you what has been impressed upon me. There are certain truths found in God’s Word that will not be adequately understood or appreciated apart from recognizing and applying an understanding of figures of speech. We claim to speak and interpret the Bible literally, but we know that the literal sense makes nonsense, so we should seek another sense.

I close with a recommendation that I urge you to obtain from me at no cost and read carefully. It is a carefully researched and expertly crafted brochure by a pastor friend I have never met face-to-face. Charles L. Hunt has written The Body of Christ: Separating Myth From Metaphor.

Author Hunt correctly asserts, in my opinion, that a failure to recognize and understand the body of Christ metaphor used by the apostle Paul makes it almost impossible to grasp God’s truth about the church of Jesus Christ. After reading his book, I agree with him.

If you would like me to mail you a copy, email me, and I will get it to you as quickly as possible. May God richly bless you in your ministry of studying the Bible, applying the Bible, and declaring the unsearchable riches of Christ.

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[1] Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1996), page 1132.