I Welcome Your Disagreements (February 5, 2006)

My heart gave a little leap for joy in our Sunday School class when someone raised her hand and said, "I disagree with you."

Great! Now the discussion can get interesting. Not that it was dull before (though, who knows, maybe it was), but a direct challenge to a statement of mine or of anybody else gives the whole conversation a keener edge. The sharp blade of disagreement is the tool a teacher needs to refine his own thoughts, retract his mistakes and clarify his obfuscations. Learners benefit when disagreement is expressed, since no other dialectical knife can better carve our thoughts into lean and worthy units.

The worst teacher I had in seminary was one who took disagreements personally, and who graded us on how precisely we regurgitated his opinions back to him. My how dull his classes were! It seemed we were learning not to engage and reason but to listen and repeat. The"listen and repeat" method is fine for multiplication tables, but
truths that are deep and satisfying are arrived at by weathering bombardments of "I think you're wrong," or, "I would put it differently."

Solomon liked a good argument. When he wrote "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another," he was indicating in part his dissatisfaction with the dullness of thoughts achieved in isolation. Even the wisest man in the world needed the stimulation of a few "No-Men" to fine tune his proverbs. St. Paul also liked it when people refused to take his word for it. Acts 17:11 says, "The Bereans were of
more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." Paul wanted them to test his words against Scripture.

In C. S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the ship's crew come to an island inhabited by invisible simpletons, the Dufflepuds. The two parties sit down for dinner, and Lewis writes,

The meal would have been pleasanter...if the conversation had not consisted entirely of agreements. The invisible people agreed about everything. Indeed most of their remarks were the sort it would not be easy to disagree with: "What I always say is, when a chap's hungry, he likes some victuals," or "Getting dark now, always does at night," or even "Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?"

Yes, yes, the ocean is wet, night is dark and hungry people like to eat. Snooze. Your life should be purpose-driven. Snore. (Sorry - that last one was a cheap shot.)

Don't be a Dufflepud. Once in a while say something people might actually object to. And if other people (even your pastor!) say something amiss, speak up with a hearty "You're wrong!" If your words are seasoned with grace, no reasonable person will be offended.