If you listen to a group discussion—especially about a controversial topic—and I mean really listen, like you had to write it all down just right all by yourself—what you’ll likely be hearing, whether you can get your head around it or not—is a few keen comments and questions buried in a sea of sloppy, ill-defined, poorly-stated, and poorly-vetted ideas.
You’ll hear people talking faster than the others can think in real-time—sometimes deliberately, in hopes of bumfuzzling the easily-intimidated. And if you examine that particular tactic, you’ll see that much of what’s said in that way is memorized one-liners that they themselves couldn’t stop and prove in the moment themselves if such were demanded of them.
That is, so many will say what they have to say, but cannot—and don’t seem to have the heart to—teach it to the others (even if it was one of the few truly worthy things that gets said in such discussions).
And then the time is up, and everyone disperses. And it’s over.
And did they really solve anything?
Did anyone learn anything?
Even where they might have given a nod to some opposing point here and there, are they really going to go home and study it out?
I observe, as I’m nearing old age, that this world is generally not patient for such things.
What they do not realize is that this impatience disqualifies them for much of the understanding that it is possible to obtain in this life. No matter how silver-tongued one may be, I have not yet seem him best the one who will withdraw to the books to vet things point by point.
Even so, so many today want to debate, and so many Christians (not all, mind you, but many from certain camps) want their children to be trained in debate so that they can help “win the nation back for Jesus”. But Jesus, while being the all-time champion of debate, also had a skill most today will never acquire. That is, he actually knew the scriptures—by which I do not mean that he could merely recite some memorized passages. No, I mean that he actually understood what the scriptures mean—which understanding comes from having thought it through for oneself. And this is the very practice so many are too impatient to do—disqualifying themselves from being like Jesus.
And this is why they do not and cannot debate like Jesus, no matter how hard they try. And even when allowing for him being God, and them not, they could do so much better than they do, had they learned how to retire to the study for hours on end, year after year, to give the scriptures the consideration they deserve.
Yet they will all identify patience as a “fruit of the Spirit”, and tell you it’s very important to have. Why, then, don’t they have it?
Have they said “no” to the Spirit in some way? Is this why they do not have this trait? Is this why they’re willing to argue and argue, while still being ignorant and unvetted? While still going with their gut and shooting from the hip?
Why have they counted the debating as more important than the studying?
Who taught them that?
Jesus?
