I’ve been thinking about the snarky exchanges between Mark Shea and James White and some of the harshness that spilled onto our blog from my interjection into their discussions (and one between Mr. White and his sister, who graciously commented on this blog and linked to the post I made).

What I have come to conclude is this: Without love demonstrated through mutual respect between two persons in dialogue, there can be little or no progress made in the search for the fullness of the truth.

The Guys From Weezer Are All Friends (I think)

This is one reason I appreciate the Called to Communion site.  They have been diligently warning commenters who make polemical or snarky comments because their purpose in creating the site is to truly come to communion with one another and, by God’s grace, help unite Christians as one in the fullness of the truth.

I think back to the persons whom (again by God’s grace) I have most influenced in their Christian lives, and those persons have been family and friends close to me, with whom I have had relationships of trust and mutual respect.  It is a prerequisite that for someone to listen to you, they have to trust that you have what is best for them in mind, that is, that your intentions are loving ones.  Without this love, your words will be tuned out or even angrily rejected.

The internet can definitely exacerbate this problem, since, as my wife pointed out in a recent post, we don’t have to actually see the person we are dialoguing with, and so with the protection of anonymity and the lack of a truly human relationship between us, I can be ruder than I ever would have been in person with impunity.

What’s the solution?  To follow Christ’s command to love our neighbor as ourself.  That means that, in dialoguing with other Christians, brothers with whom you are in imperfect communion, you need to make extra effort to speak charitably, to listen attentively, and to consider the possibility that your beliefs, however firmly fixed, may not be completely accurate.  In fact, you may have accepted false principles or premises on which the rest of your beliefs rest.  This humility is necessary because, as in the case of Mr. White and Mr. Shea, both of them can’t be right about all of these issues, since they hold mutually exclusive beliefs on many of them, and so one of them needs to continue to diligently search for the fullness of the truth and pray God will help him see his errors if indeed he has some, and since neither knows with 100% confidence that his beliefs are accurate, both of them need to continue this search for truth.  Therefore, all of us as Christians must do so as well.