“The truth has nothing to fear” is the slogan of the Restitutio podcast. I really like that. As I understand it there are really two ideas wrapped up in those few words. The first is recognizing that the truth itself is invulnerable to being defeated. If you already know what is true then questioning that truth poses no danger to the truth whatsoever because no argument against the truth can prove the truth wrong. The second is recognizing and valuing the actual truth above any commitment you may have to any belief you currently think is true. If you really value the truth then if you happen to be wrong about something then learning that you were wrong can give you the opportunity to identify and discard any wrong beliefs you may have, change your mind, and embrace whatever is actually true.

Learning to become comfortable with not knowing the right answer and remaining undecided while you continue to study is worthwhile. Giving up the certainty seeking faith I was talking about in episode 30 is a big part of coming to the place of being okay with not knowing all the right answers. Once you recognize that acing a theology test is not a precondition for eternal life and that following Jesus is more about living faithfully in accordance with your current convictions, you should have an easier time giving up certainty seeking faith, if that is something you’ve struggled with. 

One of the problems with beliefs is that they often come bundled together in ways that make them seem like they can’t readily be separated. The problem with this conception of ideas is that a belief system may have problems in some areas while being correct in others. If someone makes arguments against the parts of your belief system that are wrong there is a risk that you might not recognize that only part of your belief system is flawed and you might end up abandoning everything about it including the things that were right. Sometimes people end up abandoning their faith entirely because they encounter arguments they don’t know how to respond to. It might be that they hear an argument against some aspect of Christianity that they don’t like. Maybe they are looking for an excuse to be able to live in their sin and they want to ease their conscience. They might know what they believe but they may not have the background knowledge or the understanding of the reasons why they should believe what they believe. It might also be that there is some aspect of Christianity that offends them for some other reason that they wish wasn’t true. If they hear an argument against Christianity that allows them to dismiss it as some kind of false myth then the aspect that offends them goes with it. It might also be that their conception of Christianity is flawed in multiple dimensions in ways that are all connected in their minds in ways they don’t know how to untangle and they simply don’t know how to identify which parts of their conception of Christianity are actually true and which are false so they end up discarding Christianity altogether. And I’m sure there are numerous other reasons why someone’s faith might be disturbed by hearing arguments against their beliefs. Those are all potential effects of learning new ideas. I have occasionally encountered preachers and teachers who think it is their job to protect people under their leadership from ideas that they disagree with, perhaps for these very reasons. This is an understandable reaction considering that in many cases hearing new ideas is what leads people to abandon their faith. However, I think this is a profoundly misguided approach. 

I’m going to include a link to a video from Sam Harris that is an excerpt from a debate he had with William Lane Craig several years ago. Depending on the kind of things you currently believe, you might find it to be a devastating argument against Christianity. Even though I’m a Christian and he is an atheist who is actively trying to disprove Christianity, I actually agree with most of what he has to say in the video, because in my opinion most of the things he has to say against Christianity are misunderstandings of what the bible actually teaches. As I see it, most of the arguments he makes in the debate are irrelevant because they are arguments against things that have nothing to do with true Christianity, even though all the things he argues against are popular misconceptions of what the bible says. 

There are at least three compelling reasons why I think that it is a big mistake to take this approach as a Christian leader. First, this is the 21st century. For most of history it may have been the case that unless you traveled far from home or unless you lived in a very diverse location you might not have encountered people with ideas that were very different from your own. So, people may not have been subject to the kinds of influences they are today. With the advent of modern modes of travel and especially the internet this is no longer the case. People are going to encounter others with a wide variety of ideas throughout their lives, and there will be occasions when their ideas are going to be challenged. Trying to keep people from being exposed to competing ideas seems to me like a very naive way of “protecting” them. It actually seems a lot more like setting people up for failure to me. This was actually one of the first things that got me interested in understanding theological issues better. I wanted to do whatever was in my power to equip my kids to deal with the objections they might encounter later in their lives. From what I can tell there is a strong effort being made against Christianity, especially in universities. I didn’t want the first time my kids encountered arguments against Christianity to come in the context of a hostile environment when they were fully unprepared to deal with them. I wanted them to hear the objections long before that in the context of conversations with me so that they would have already gone through the process of thinking those kinds of questions through. If we are in the habit of subjecting our own views to scrutiny and the objections of others then at least three things should happen. 

3 benefits of questioning what we believe

1. The views that survive that scrutiny should be much more able to withstand objections when they come from others since hopefully by that time the bad ideas will have mostly been rooted out and discarded. 

2. We won’t be taken off guard by hearing new arguments because this will just be a normal part of life for us. 

3. We won’t be afraid to think and consider new ideas because our goals will be different. Instead of feeling like we have to defend every single point of our theology, we can be open to the possibility that maybe we got something wrong. If we do find out we were wrong about something we can revise our thinking about that one point without our entire worldview falling apart like a house of cards. 

This leads me to the second reason I think it is a bad idea to “protect” people from ideas. People who don’t understand why they believe what they do make ineffective evangelists, especially if they are closed minded and unable to connect with others and understand their ideas. Unfortunately, for a big fraction of my life that would have been a perfect description of me. I didn’t know why I believed what I did since most of what I believed I had just inherited from others, so I was ill equipped to explain what I believed much less defend it. In addition to that, there were aspects of what I believed that I didn’t like and that I was embarrassed about because I was supposed to be sharing the good news, but some of what I believed didn’t seem good at all. If you listened to episode 30 you already know that I also had a misconception of what faith actually was that created a sort of phobia of learning in me, which had affected me in ways that are relevant to this part of the issue. It kept me from really understanding and being willing to consider another way of looking at things which I suspect was off putting to the few others I did have conversations with in evangelistic contexts. If I hadn’t had the sort of perspective I did about faith I might have come across as a reasonable person who was willing to listen to the points other people made rather than just repeating the same nonsensical points again and again without recognizing that my point didn’t make sense.

The third reason I think it is a bad idea to “protect” people from ideas has to do with suffering. Human suffering is a fact of life that few people escape. Unless you happen to die at an early age you will face the loss of people you care about, and you are likely to suffer in lots of other ways as well. Suffering is a prominent theme in scripture and is sometimes framed as an essential part of our development into the people God wants us to become, so it would be inappropriate to ignore its significance to each of us. Some of the popular ideas about God attribute all causality to Him, including the reason for all suffering, while ideas near the other extreme appear to attribute nothing but happiness to God’s will. I don’t think either of those extremes is right, but I don’t see a lot of useful open minded conversations happening in this area. Unless people have a carefully considered and reasonable conception of the role of suffering in our lives they can have their grief and suffering complicated by a crisis of faith. Protecting people from the range of ideas on this subject can leave them completely ignorant and unprepared to deal with the harsh reality of their own suffering.

I have personally experienced that very thing and I’ve witnessed it happening in others. It is not a good thing. In my opinion, “protecting” people from other ideas especially in this area can be counterproductive to the development of Christ-like character and can prolong the suffering that we will all face by actively preventing the consideration of ideas that might be helpful on a number of levels. Understanding and anticipating that suffering is part of following Jesus can increase the likelihood that a person might respond to suffering in a way that will produce perseverance and steadfastness. Correctly understanding God’s role in suffering and in the world can also prevent people from blaming God for their pain. When people fail to correctly understand this issue it sometimes leads people to be angry against God and to completely abandon their faith. Sometimes it leads to a sort of resignation and the death of passion in the lives of those who retain their faith in spite of their suffering. While both of those outcomes are common, they are not the only possibilities that exist. It’s also possible to genuinely suffer loss and pain while remaining faithful to God without resentment, anger, or blaming Him yet without resigning yourself to fate and the inability to make any difference in what happens next while at the same time developing the high ideals of steadfastness and perseverance that are commended in scripture.

Those are some of the reasons I think it is very important to have an open mind, a willingness to admit that you might be wrong about any number of things, a commitment to pursuing the truth regardless of the consequences to ourselves, and a recognition that our beliefs don’t have to function as a set of inseparable beliefs that stand or fall together. If we have the right outlook we should be able to find out that we are wrong about one or more aspects of what we think without having every part of our faith destroyed. In that case our faith can actually be strengthened through the process of knowing more of the truth, knowing God better, and understanding more of how things actually work. I can testify that over the last 10 years I’ve learned a lot about the Bible, I’ve changed my mind about several big issues and tweaked what I thought on some others, and each time this has happened it has been like cleaning off part of a dirty window that I have been trying to see through. The bible just makes more sense to me now. I believe God is actually good and that the gospel really is good news. I’ve gone through some of the darkest days of my life during that time, but I didn’t suffer a crisis of faith because of it like I did previously because I don’t blame God for what happened. I don’t know all the reasons why bad things happen, but I have confidence that God loves me even when they do. And, I find consolation in the hope of a bright future after the resurrection and maybe even for many good days between now and then. 

If you are a church leader, I urge you to consider an alternative to protecting people under your leadership from bad ideas. Maybe it would be better if you took the approach of helping people understand the full range of what theories are out there and then if you have a particular view that you are sure is right then make the strongest arguments you can for your own view. At least then you wouldn’t be crippling the ability of people you’re supposed to be helping by leaving them ignorant and unprepared to deal with the suffering that will surely come to most of them eventually. Feel free to use any of the resources from this website to help you do that. All of the videos, audios, slides, and most of the text from the videos are available to download for free from UnderstandingPerspectives.com

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May God bless you.