Always Nit-Picking Rather Than Always Reforming

 There is a certain exhaustion that comes with debating online or in person that I think everyone feels. I want to discuss why I think this is. 

1. I think that people are exhausted by the avalanche of voices all giving their opinions without any sort of genuine direction from historic theology or the Bible so that it seems that when someone does come in with those it's just more of the same thing. Going back and forth is exhausting. It's tiring. It's annoying. It seems futile, and that is likely the source of this type of exhaustion in these dialogues. The problem simply is that everyone has an opinion but so few people have a good biblical reason for it. Since the Bible is viewed as an inkblot and all views are seen as valid because personal experience is seen as valid and something to affirm in others as a sign of love and friendship, the opposite of this, i.e., when the Bible is viewed as clear and is spoken with authority rather than an optional opinion among many, it can annoy people to hear, especially over and over again.

2. I think many people today are critical of everything. I'm actually being critical of those being critical right now. It's impossible to get away from being critical. But it is possible to be critical about what is important and let things that are not important go. It can be exhausting if someone makes everything important because then it's like living in constant negativity and judgment. That's exhausting. But what is also exhausting is that if everyone is critical of everything, it can (a) go unnoticed that everyone is actually critical of everything and therefore the exhaustion wrongly identified as being rooted in criticism of something itself and (b) the criticism of important things often just blend in with the unimportant things and get an eyeroll when discussed as well. In the first, we need to realize that what is exhausting is not critically assessing something but rather critically assessing less worthwhile things. In the second case, we need to realize that there are important things to assess, and they are worthy of debate in an effort to make straight Christ's paths to sanctify His people.

3. I think the final aspect of exhaustion is when people, either on purpose or just by lack of practice, don't use logic and/or knowledge of the Bible in their discussions with one another, and so it can be a host of conversations that talk past one another, caricature the other position, lack listening or reading comprehension, or simply just wanting to win a debate with any means possible. The worst of all it's just arguing with people with a completely different worldview and think the biblical worldview is weird and repulsive. These are exhausting because its somewhat like running around in circles when you're late for a destination. Lots of energy spent but not much progress.

I think the important thing to remember is that we are looking to use our critical thinking skills to always reform, not to always nit-pick or get an opinion across because we want to say something. We need to make sure that what we are arguing about is actually important and not the devil wasting our time so that we don't talk about the really important things. Likewise, the purpose of any conversation should be to love God's people, not just win an argument at the expense of logic and the Bible. All work is exhausting, but if it is done right, it builds good things. Let us strive to be exhausted for eternal rewards and not for those things that have no lasting value.