"...we have crossed a line from lone paranoid nuts to larger groups, who are starting to communicate with each other, all with an interconnected belief system." - Geraghty
"This brings me to another question of discernment, viz., the question of falsifiability, or, 'What would it take to change my mind?'" - Snoeberger
My thoughts below predate COVID-19, masks, hydroxychloroquine, or churches defying public health emergency orders. Last fall, different controversies were exposing problems in how believers evaluate conflicting claims and decide what to believe.
But those problems are still with us, and the current raft of controversies is exposing them even more painfully.
Many Christians who claim to revere the Bible lack biblical habits for evaluating truth claims and consequently lack skill in judging the ethics of situations in a biblical way. It seems almost ubiquitous now—the habit of putting the political/culture-war lenses on first, and embracing or rejecting claims based solely on source classification (friend or foe). The result is that ideas are accepted uncritically if they’re perceived to be from “our people” and rejected reflexively if they’re seen as from “the other side.”
What’s missing is weighing ideas and claims on their own merits—on things like evidence and sound reasoning. Increasingly, what’s completely missing is any nonpolitical consideration of what Scripture teaches and what sound application requires of us.
More than ever, believers need to meditate on a genuinely Christian view of truth and on a genuinely Christian approach to evaluating truth claims. At least five principles are are fundamental that effort.
"'Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone' (Titus 3:1–2). These marks demonstrate true faith and integrity among Christians." - Wyatt Graham
"As I considered the types of pushback I received from some fellow believers ... I started to realize that their comments had little to do with the facts, logic, or manner in which I wrote that particular article. Rather, they were the same kinds of reactions I’ve see to any post I or other Christians write involving a call to better discernment in the church." - Natasha Crain
"Information, disinformation, and narratives now spread globally between billions of people at the push of a button. Solana observes this did indeed occur, for good or for ill, with the COVID-19 pandemic" - Acton
"In a recent article, Dennis Prager lists four practices that are destroying America from the inside. One of those he outlines is demonization, where an entire class or group of people is labeled as inherently evil. Heather Mac Donald’s WSJ editorial challenged this very thing." - CPost
"Arguments tend to be focused on facts and logic.... A person presents arguments in the hope that someone else will have their understanding or thinking altered as they consider the arguments.... Narratives, on the other hand, tend to be focused on personal stories and experiences. ... Increasingly, the discourse in our culture is bereft of arguments but filled with competing narratives." - Ben Edwards
