Objective and Fair?

One Sunday, I was hanging out with a friend from church after the service. “What do you think of today’s sermon?” he asked. “It’s OK, I’ll need more time to think about it and digest it” I replied.

“To me, it was full of bovine feces!”

Needless to say, I was somewhat taken aback by his comment.

“It was all about [one topic], the sermon was trying to [something bad]. I would be embarrassed to bring my non-Christian friends to hear such a sermon! Where is the [important topic]?”

“Err… I thought he talked about that when he brought up [some Bible verses] and said [certain points]?” I said.

“That was just a brief mention! The rest of the sermon was all about [one topic brought up earlier]. That’s why the church is not growing!”

Well, that was his opinion. He certainly had the freedom to decide for himself if something was just a brief mention or was it carefully woven into the sermon to broaden the perspective (what I thought). But I found it sobering, it was as if we were in totally different churches, listening to totally different pastors talk about totally different things…

Another Incident:

One day someone forwarded an email to a mailing list I’m a part of, and that email raised some discussions. In the midst of it a lady brought shared her own personal take on the topic (nothing wrong with that, right?) but got attacked over it. And this attacker was vicious, he said there was no difference between her and an unbeliever, they both never consider God and just follow their own selfish desires.

And about two paragraphs down the attacker specified that he was not just questioning her motivations, he was questioning her salvation. That, to me, is a very serious matter. So I read and reread the lady’s sharing, trying to see if there was anything in her email that could be construed the way her attacker saw it.

Nope, there wasn’t.

And I am not too blur to notice anything wrong. For the record, I majored in Philosophy in my university days, and we’re trained to find fault with arguments, anticipate possible defenses and demolish them in advance. Not good for building up a social life or winning popularity contests, hence the sometimes-offensive edge that characterizes my writing and my thoughts.

Putting it simply, I’m good, really good, at finding fault. And I couldn’t find any in what she shared.

Well, I brought it up to the attacker and invited him to show from her email how he came to his harsh conclusions about her. Needless to say, he ignored that question and called me nitpicking. I wonder if he ever realized how many people were laughing at his arguments and evasions and how silly he made himself look. But I also find it sobering to read his attack over the lady’s email, it was as if we were reading totally different emails from totally different people.

My question today: are we as objective and clear-headed as we think we are?

Mark Joyner, the author of Simpleology, once said that the indispensable skill for leaders is the ability to see the battlefield. Everything else, motivation, organization, communication and all that, can be delegated. To me, it’s about perception; can you see things the way they are, not the way your emotions, prejudices and your paradigm want them to be?

And that is important, because we need perception to be able to follow this Scriptural admonition:

And what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8, NASB)

And we cannot do justice unless we can see clearly what is happening.

“But I am not a judge or leader yet. Why do you talk about justice?”

Justice starts in the little things. That’s how God works. He watches how much we esteem (or despise) justice in the little things. From there he’ll see how well we’ll do when entrusted with much (Luke 16:10-12). It can be over a small matter, such as managing the squabbles of two sons (you might guess that I’m speaking from experience in this matter) to work out a fair solution for both boys.

And injustice can be seen in matters such as a wife’s friend ignoring the faults in a wife (out of friendship) but opening bugging the husband over exactly the same faults, even when the husband is nowhere near as guilty as the wife is.

(By the way, such a friend is abetting the wife in standing in the way of sinners, described in Psalm 1:1. I wrote some material on that, and I’m thinking about whether to release here on my blog. Let me chew on that a bit.)

Practical Steps:

I am not claiming to be objective and clear-headed all the time (I’m too objective to make such a claim) but I have found some ideas useful for keeping my perspective.

1) Take time to hear or read something you disagree with, and try to put yourself in the speaker’s (or writer’s) shoes.

I started doing this just for the sake of being able to find loopholes in other people’s arguments, so that I could demolish them. Then I saw people try to do the same to me (what we sow we reap, right?) but they didn’t do a good job because they only went as deep as necessary just to come up with a cheap argument against my position. And it was easy to embarrass them as a result.

So to keep people from embarrassing me in like manner, I made it a point to always do thorough research, until I could think like the people I disagree with. And God used that to develop empathy in me. That’s a great help in developing perception, because when I start to see how people make really bad mistakes, I start asking myself if I make the same mistakes. Which leads to the second point…

2) Think through what you do, why and why you choose that reason for what you do.

The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways… Proverbs 14:8 (NIV)

This practice is so powerful, even non-Christians benefit greatly from it. One of the practical ways of doing that is to keep a journal (or blog, which is an online version of the same thing). Trying to express what we believe and why we believe it is a great way to make ourselves give thought to our ways. Even Solomon did journaling too, in a sense. We read that he had Elihoreph, Ahijah and Jehoshaphat as scribes and recorders (1 Kings 4:3).

Of course, journaling is not a fail-safe method. While writing this blogpost I took a while to check out the blog of the email attacker. Yeah, he blogs too. Some good thoughts and points, but that didn’t stop him from making a fool of himself. What else do we need?

3) Be open to being taught.

Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser, teach a righteous man and he will increase his learning. (Proverbs 9:9, NASB)

And in order to be taught you need to be near people who can teach you.

He who separates himself seeks his own desire, he quarrels against all sound wisdom. (Proverbs 18:1, NASB)

Even Solomon didn’t isolate himself. He surrounded himself with godly counsel. After he was praised as having great wisdom (1 Kings 3) we read of the officials who served at his court (1 Kings 4). Notice that the overwhelming majority of them are priests?

So give this matter some thought. Hope that what I share in this will bless you in some way. Until next time...