(or Shooting Yourself in the Foot Because It Makes Your Hand Feel Good in Contrast)

OK, right off the bat, I’m going to cop to having the beam in my own eye on occasion. So, don’t think this is just a bloggier-than-thou rant.

I read a really good blog article today on a particular aspect of the Christian walk in which many of us need to be careful, and which requires one to strike a careful balance, as it can be easy to swing the pendulum too far one way or the other.

In the midst of a brilliant piece of writing, speaking in purposefully generic terms (the author refers — quite literally — to Dr. Thing-a-ma-jig*), there’s a specific one-paragraph swipe at those who hold a particular theological stance with which the author disagrees.

One could say that this was uncalled-for, but it was actually even unnecessary, as the author had made the exact same point (in generic terms) in the previous paragraph.

Remove that one paragraph, and what you have on your hands is a great article, chock full of Scripture and keen insight. With that paragraph in there, you wind up with three types of readers:

1. Those who think it was right to include the swipe and get some kind of smug self-satistfaction out of it.
2. Those who think it was wrong to include the swipe and disregard the remainder of the article.
3. Those who think it was wrong to include the swipe, but eventually got over it and took away the 95% of the article that was good.

I was pretty close to #2 for quite a while, but glanced through the rest of the article and read some of the comments. One of the early ones was from someone in category #3, and his rationality caused me to re-read and “get over it”, too.

Obviously, those in category #2 don’t get anything out of the article. But I would argue that a decent percentage of those in category #1 don’t either. That one paragraph tickled their itching ears, and that affirmation is all that they take away.

Why would you present some solid Biblical teaching, and then exclude much of your audience from gaining benefit from it? A less charitable person might come to the conclusion that the author deemed the excluded portion of the audience unworthy of what he was sharing. If the author was a pastor, would only certain people be allowed into his church?

Yes, the truth can offend. But it’s supposed to be the truth that does it, not us. Christ was cited as the stumbling block, not Christians. Paul referred to the law as “our tutor to bring us to Christ”, not to drag us there kicking and screaming.

It’s often unnecessary to “call a spade a spade”. Sometimes, you just need to spell out the definition, and let the spade realize that he digs dirt and has a handle.

* (OK, actually it was a different name, but it was an equally generic term. So don’t bother googling “thing-a-ma-jig”.)