For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
2Tim.4:3
I think Pauls' words are true concerning the days we're living in. I think they apply not only to the world, but to the church. When Paul said,
Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and
that there be no divisions among you; but
that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
1Cor.1:10,
I think his purpose was to combat heresy. It's sad how even on Christian websites, there is so much division. By this fact alone, heresy has to be rampant among us.
Any comments welcome.
It's in the nature of being human that we negotiate among ourselves toward the Truth. God has made us capable of reasoning, of employing His laws governing logic in understanding what is true and false, of making deductions and extrapolations (inferences), and careful distinctions, and so on. But we are in a world corrupted by selfishness (aka sin), which always darkens and twists human understanding; we have an Enemy, the devil, who works to deceive, and confuse, and obscure the Truth; and we do not all operate at the same level of sophistication of thought and depth of knowledge. This means that when we come to together to discuss Truth, debate occurs. Because we are all fallen creatures, selfishness inevitably intrudes on these debates, sidetracking the pursuit of Truth into all sorts of useless rabbit trails concerned with defending pride, or making room for sin, or pushing notions derived from our personal preferences rather than from objective fact. In light of these things, it's astonishing that humans are able to agree on anything as true!
There is a difference, though, between divisiveness, that is, merely desiring to create contention and strife among people, and thoughtful, open-minded debate. Too often, these two things - division and debate - are lumped together. Doing so makes the debate necessary to discovering the Truth an evil thing, which in turn stifles the pursuit and discovery of Truth. Of all people, however, the pursuit of Truth ought to be of paramount concern for Christians. Using all the means God has provided (Reason, Logic, observation, testing, debate, etc.), they should be constantly discussing and negotiating their way to a deeper and deeper understanding of Reality and Truth, both of which teach the Christian about their Source: God, the Creator. And as Christian's do so, submitting themselves in their debates to the control of the Holy Spirit, they come more and more to a unified consensus about Truth (and God).
The alternative is to forbid all constructive negotiation toward the Truth, calling it mere fleshly divisiveness. Here's the thing though: On what basis is such a thing done? How does one person look over at two others negotiating toward the Truth and say, "You're just divisive and argumentative. It's wrong. Stop it"? Doesn't such a statement assert Truth? Yes, it does. Why should the two who are debating over what's true, accede to the declaration of the third, critical person? Is the third person correct? How can this be ascertained without discussion and perhaps even debate? But how can such debate occur if such debate is an immoral, fleshly business?
What's to be done when this sort of situation occurs? How can the Truth of the matter be got at when debate is forbidden as mere strife and contention? In the secular world, such a circumstance resolves down to "might makes right." For an ugly, but all-too-common example, simply consider the cancel-culture of Wokeism. No discussion, no debate; just sheer volume, vitriol, rage and the mob. If the radical, woke Left decides you've stepped afoul of its constantly-radicalizing ideology, there is no discussion, no debate, just rabid finger-pointing and vicious invective, silencing and canceling the one who has dared to disagree. Is this fanatic "How dare you?" mobbing and canceling of alternate views preferable to debate? Can it lead to a greater understanding of what is true? It never has.
Where does the silencing of disagreement and debate lead? To a screaming crowd of women marching down a street, their breasts and bottoms bare, as they protest rape; to doctors and scientists afraid to say that a man is a man and a woman is a woman and that they are fundamentally and unchangeably distinct from one another; to sexual perverts grooming children in public library book-reading sessions; to the mutilation of confused children caught up in the gender insanity of the Woke Left; to mathematics and exams being expressions of white, male oppression, and so on. The debate that heads-off this very sort of departure from Truth into delusion the Woke Left wants to eradicate under total conformity to its insanity. I'd rather have the former than the latter any day.
In communist countries, the dissident is imprisoned, exiled and or killed. There is only the monolithic "Truth" of the State, maintained by constant surveillance of, and severe penalties upon, any who challenge that "Truth." All debate is silenced, all disagreement suppressed; Truth is what the State says it is. Does this seem preferable to people coming together, freely, unconstrained in their views, to hash-out in debate - sometimes even heated debate - what is and isn't true? I certainly think so - especially in light of the
tens of millions of people killed by the tyrannical State in the last 100 years or so.
The "Can't we all just get along?" philosophy is, then, not virtuous but infantile and dangerous. The "Just be nice" approach, when it denies all discussion and disagreement, leads to oppression, and delusion, and terrible evil. Instead, the Christian believer ought always, like the "noble Bereans," to "test whether these things be so," by discussion, examination and testing, sifting out truth from falsehood. They ought, of course, to do so with grace, patience, humility, and careful reasoning, trusting that Truth is knowable just as God, the Source of all Truth, is knowable.
