Disagreeing with obstinate buffoons is hard work. We’ll get to that in later posts and explore best practices for doing it.  

In this first post, I want to take a step back. Why talk? Why engage with others? Though we have gotten used to both, when you think about it, both are sickeningly arduous. So why do them at all?

To talk, you have to muster utterances out of your body. You have to pick and choose the right words. You have to string those words together coherently. Talking isn’t babbling or jabbering. 

To engage, you have to think, which takes a lot of effort, not just for the doofus. You have to identify and differentiate. You have to describe and explain. You may have to clarify terms and qualify assertions.

Sounds exhausting, right? But that’s not even close to the brunt of the work when it comes to engaging another. 

To engage, you have to listen to your interlocutor. You have to understand his words and his reasoning. This, most likely, will require inquiring. And then you have to respond with your own thoughts. 

Uttering, stringing, picking, thinking, clarifying, qualifying, inquiring, responding–sheesh! Now repeat the whole process in the same conversation. Now repeat it again . . . and again . . . and again. 

Why would anyone with a sliver of a brain want to subject ourselves to this? It’s horribly enervating just thinking about it. It makes no sense why you would willingly engage someone who disagrees with you. 

So what’s the reason? Why do people do it? Why do you do it? 

Despite the diagnosis that talking and thinking are arduous and enervating, there is the elephant in the room. We engage ignorant loons and inflammatory rascals not rational creatures. 

Throw into the mix the noetic effects of sin and now we’ve got a pot of impossibility. Talking seems superfluous. Engagement seems foolish. Taciturnity starts to look prudent. Why do it? Why walk uphill with a broken leg? 

Why talk to those who don’t share our values and views? Why intentionally engage them and argue with them? What benefit do we get from it? What wisdom is found in it? 

Listening could make us look weak. Asking questions could make us look ignorant. Engaging could be interpreted as an invitation to populate our heads with their pernicious propaganda. No thanks. 

It’s much easier and more satisfying to avoid, ignore, gaslight, or cancel them.

The ancient gadfly, Socrates, had his reasons for engaging others. The early apologists found his approach so helpful that they referred to him as a “Christian before Christ.”  

Socrates believed in Truth. And he believed that others could know the Truth. So he talked to the ignoramus. He engaged those antagonistic toward his values and views. He wanted to enlighten and convince them. 

He engaged anybody who claimed to know the Truth: lawyers, politicians, cobblers, carpenters, and even atheists. He would disagree with them because the Truth required it. The Truth was worth it. 

“The greatest benefaction you can have in your life is someone who is willing to rid you of nonsense,” he remarked. He believed that sniffing out the absurd in someone’s logic is an act of kindness.

Socrates believed that people don’t have the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In fact, many have the “wrong” truth. But through the exchange of values and views (“dialectics”), they can come to learn the Truth. 

Everyone can learn from each other. Even if it’s just one more piece of information to confirm our conclusions or one more question to help us better clarify an ambiguous term. We can teach each other. 

To some, the Socratic approach sounds admirably Christian. Pursue the Truth. Patiently engage with those who don’t share your values or views. Enlighten the ignorant. Be humble. Learn what you can. 

To me, it’s quasi-Christian; or at best, semi-Christian. It doesn’t start in the right place. Nor does it go far enough.

Though our saintly forefathers looked to the ancient gadfly, Socrates, for wisdom, once you peel back the veneer of his thought, the approaches are not the same. A Christian approach is markedly different. 

Socrates didn’t have a doctrine of hamartiology ironed out and operative in his approach. The impetus for his engagement was that people were ignorant and needed to understand to live well. 

For the Christian, the reasons for engagement are much higher. Our impetus for engagement is that there are real sinners out there and the Lord has commanded us to make disciples of them. 

We’ll address this later, but our job when engaging others isn’t primarily to learn from them or to get them to clearly and precisely understand why the Christian world-and-life view makes the most sense. 

We are commanded to teach them to obey all that Christ has commanded.  

We are called to be instructors. And we can’t discriminate in our engagement. We are directed to engage the nations. The stranger, foreigner, and enemy, as well as the expert, idiot, and witch. We don’t get to be selective. 

In fact, our Master Himself didn’t shy away from those who didn’t share His values and views— like the arrogant scribes; the offended Gentiles; the ignorant fishermen; and even the malformed Accuser. 

Why engage? Because our Master and King says so. Making disciples who will observe all that He has commanded will involve talking and engaging. And as we will discuss later, it will inevitably involve disagreeing. 

But we do not engage for our own benefit—for the piquant satisfaction of learning something new or “converting” someone (i.e., convincing them of the truthfulness of the faith), but for the Lord. We engage not because the Truth is at stake, but because the Truth commands it.