And sure, eh, it's understandable. We're told to be fully convinced in our own minds.
But boy, does it drive me bonkers. Even when you're talking about something that you're supposed to be dogmatic about.
Say you're in a Bible study or sunday school class. The teacher has a target, a goal, a conclusion he wants everybody to reach. He pauses, and asks for input. At this point, some intrepid student is going to raise her hand and make an observation that is entirely true and relevant to the topic, but doesn't go where the teacher wants it to go.
This is where you'll get one of two possible reactions:
- He'll agilely take the comment in stride and affirm it as an equally valid point.
- He'll either ignore the comment entirely or condemn it as irrelevant because it wasn't the input he desired.
This second reaction has, as of late, been driving me batty.
You're talking about Jesus. His purpose for coming into the world. The teacher stops and asks for input...
A student raises his hand.
"To save people from their sins."
The teacher responds, "no, actually, he came to disseminate the Truth."
Really?
Okay, if I were to be honest with myself, the teacher's response is absolutely valid. Jesus did come to share the Truth. What drives me batty is the dogmatism to a certain line of thinking that automatically invalidates any alternate way of approaching the question.
Gahhhhh...
If that's dogmatism, I'm going to be a catmatist from now on.
Until next time,
- Daniel
I wasn't there, so you'll know better than me, but that sounds more like just being too strong in sticking to the outline that's been planned ahead of time. "Yeah, but He also came to disseminate the truth, which is what I want to talk about today," seems like it would be more true to what the leader was actually trying to say.
ReplyDeleteThe way I see it, the leader really has three choices if he's going to be honest: a) he could phrase his answers to true-but-not-what-he's-looking-for questions more carefully, like above, b) he could stop asking questions, since he's really only asking questions to simulate an open-ended conversation instead of have one, since he's got a script/plan/outline/end goal, or, c) actually have open-ended discussion for the Bible study.
I'm of the opinion that the last option would be the most healthy, since that's the option that involves the least amount of chewing other people's meat for them, teaching them to eat meat on their own. It also has the nice perk of cutting out much planning for the Bible study; pretty much all you need to know is the passage you're studying for the Bible study.
A good set of questions that can be used for doing this is here: http://www.cmaresources.org/article/seven-signs-in-john
The questions are presented with the Seven Signs in John, but can be used for pretty much any passage of Scripture. Hope this helps.