Writing

Read Part 1.

Teachers are supposed to discover things ahead of time and then share them with students. But sometimes the discoveries come during the teaching. It’s part of the compensation package.

A month or so ago, I experienced one of these moments of discovery during the 9^th grade class I teach three days a week—a class in formal logic. (Yes, logic. I dare you to read a short essay about formal logic. What are you afraid of?)

My light bulb moment was not the discovery that evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity are desperate for more constituents capable of thinking clearly about hard questions. That reality struck home a couple of years ago, and I’m reminded almost daily. (Often enough, the guy in the mirror is the evidence.) Nor was my light bulb moment the realization that if we start teaching kids logic again, as in the good old days, we might see a generation of better Christian thinkers succeed the “this feels true to me” generations we’ve raised up in America over the last century or so. I already believed that. It’s why I’m teaching the class.

The light bulb came on when an idea I’d accepted as true in theory became “real” by experience. The students and I were working through some exercises sixteen chapters or so into our textbook¹ when we arrived at this question:

Smith said, “Pro-lifers don’t care about children who are already born. All they care about is their stupid political agenda.” Jones disagreed by saying, “No, there are many pro-lifers who are involved in caring for children.”

The assigned task was to analyze the paragraph, “isolate the related statements, and put them into categorical form. Assign abbreviations to the terms, place them on the square of opposition, and determine their relationship.” In this case, the available relationships were contradiction, contrariety or subcontrariety.

Fundamentalism—and conservative Christianity in general—needs more people who argue well. It does not need more people who quarrel well!

Scripture opposes quarreling, along with the behaviors the KJV renders as “strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings” and “tumults” (2 Cor. 12:20). But arguing is something else. Scripture calls us to argue and to do it well. Every Christian is obligated to develop and exercise the skill of thinking and communicating clearly with the goal of persuasion.

With that as a working definition of argue, let’s consider a few basics for arguing better.

Argue for the right reasons.

Why do people argue? Unflattering reasons come quickly to mind. As sinners, we often argue to gain the esteem of others, to defeat someone we don’t like, or to try to win an imagined (or real) competition for loyal supporters. Sometimes people argue because they have a contrarian disposition and enjoy the challenge and repartee. (For these, the question is not “Why argue?” but “Why not argue?”)

But for Christians, the proper goal of argument is to establish the truth or rightness of ideas or actions.

1. You have opinions. There’s got to be something a lot of people are mixed up about. You could set them straight.

“Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.” (William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost. Act i. Sc. 2.)

2. Tradition. You have a chance to participate in the grand, ancient tradition of rhetoric: persuasive verbal communication.

It’s that time again! SharperIron is inviting anyone with writing talent to submit an article for our 3rd annual Writing Contest. This year, we’ll be selecting up to four winning articles and awarding each a spot on the front page as well as $75 (but you could win a good bit more! See below.) If you submit more than one article, you might even win more than once.

Please consider this post as being intentionally below our usual front page standards. “Intentionally,” because we’re coming off of a holiday and I haven’t completely taken my heels off my desk yet.

What I aim to do here is share some pretty much random thoughts on the year past and the one head from a SharperIron point of view.

The long awaited 2010 Writing Contest restuls are in. There were numerous strong entries this year and we wish we could give awards for many more of them. Many thanks to all of you who contributed articles!

Per the announcement earlier this year, we narrowed the winners to three. Two of the three have already been published. The third is scheduled to post tomorrow.

Our 2010 Writing Contest ended over a month ago. So some of you are probably wondering, when will the winners be announced? Well, this is not that announcement!

But it’s coming soon. Several excellent articles were submitted this year, and we’ve already posted a few of them. Our panel of volunteer judges is slowly narrowing the choices down to three winners. We should have the decision nailed down in a couple of weeks.

This year’s writing contest ends June 30 at midnight

You could win $125!
(Even if you can’t get your final version done by then, turn in a draft.)
More information about the contest here.

It’s that time again! SharperIron is inviting anyone with writing talent to submit an article for our 2nd annual Writing Contest. This year, we’ll be selecting up to three winning articles and awarding each a spot on the front page as well as $125. If you submit more than one article, you might even win more than once.

The winners of our first-ever SharperIron writing contest have been chosen!

They are John P. Davis for “My Journey Out of Dispensationalism” and Paul J. Scharf for “Why I Am a Dispensationalist.” These contestants will receive prize checks in the mail shortly and their articles will be published here in sequence within a few weeks.