A scoffer who is rebuked will only hate you; the wise, when rebuked, will love you.
—Proverbs 9:8
"Is this the room for an argument?" asks Michael Palin's character in a classic
Monty Python skit.
"I told you once," John Cleese tells him.
"No, you didn't!"
"I most certainly did."
They continue in this vein to Palin's mounting frustration. Cleese simply
contradicts everything Palin says. Back and forth the nonsense goes until
finally Palin shouts, "This isn't an argument! An argument is a series of
propositions laid out in order to establish a central point. It's not the
mere gainsaying of whatever the other person says!"
To which Cleese loftily replies, "Can be."
This is a bad argument, of which there are too many examples in our evangelical
world. Still, I don't think the problem we face as a community is that we
have too many arguments of poor quality, but that we have too few of any
kind.
We need more arguments. We need them in our churches, in
our families, in our marriages, in our schools, in our country, in our lives.
Let me rush to say that we don't need more bickering. We all have plenty
of that already. We certainly don't need more contention, more backbiting,
more disrespect, more pompous pronouncements.
What we do need instead is more proper argument. Proper argument sets out
as clearly as possible just why someone has come to the conclusion he or
she has. It exposes the evidence for this conclusion to clear view and shows
all of the steps by which someone has arrived at this opinion. Proper argument
then invites the listener or reader to scrutinize both the warrants and the
logic of the argument. Perhaps the warrants are weak at step B: The Bible
tells the truth (step A); the Bible says that God helps those who help ...
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