Radical Conservative and Radical Liberal ideologies surrounding Christianity often miss the mark of truth.
An extreme position of any kind is vulnerable to inaccuracy.
On both sides of these extremes is an underlying premise: accept everything you are told without questioning – unless it’s the other side, then question them relentlessly.
If you are a conservative, you will swallow conservative ideas whole without a second thought while being extremely critical of liberal ideas.
The same is true if you are a liberal.
This is a natural human phenomenon.
We will gladly accept information that agrees with our already existing ideas and mindsets. But anything else is worthy of being questioned.
I think as a Christian we should be careful about this mindset. It can easily lead us to swallow a false idea without a second thought.
Many false religions exist today because religious people swallow what they are taught without thinking and can never come to a knowledge of the truth.
Who Is Right?
Do you think that your side is 100% correct about everything?
If you do, congratulations! You’re as stupid as humanly possible and there’s little hope for you until you correct that mindset.
But most people will acknowledge that it’s extremely unlikely that their side is 100% correct about everything they believe.
So then based on that premise, we can accept that we are likely wrong about some things, even if we don’t know what those things are.
If it is true that we are possibly wrong about a few things, we cannot let conservative or liberal ideas flow directly into our mind without questioning them, no matter what side of the aisle we are on.
The goal should be to become as skeptical about information we agree with as we are about information we disagree with.
Everything must be met with that skeptical mind.
We have to learn to question everything. Because questions are the bedrock of finding truth.
Pilate asked Christ “What is truth” during the mock-trial of Christ.
This was and is the most important question known to man.
And most people never answer it because most people never ask it because they believe they are already in possession of the truth.
Whether political, religious, ideological or otherwise, people with the most extreme positions know and understand the least about any given position.
Because if they were aware of how little they know, they wouldn’t act so convinced of what they believe they know.
For a wise person, the more they learn about everything, the less sure they are of anything.
Because they have seen how many times they have been wrong in the past and are therefore careful about being overly confident about what they believe at any given time.
True faith is a searching faith.
It is a faith that is constantly examine the scriptures with the mindset:
“Am I missing something here?
Am I misunderstanding something here?
Is there a command or teaching from the mind of God that I am not aware of or that I am not following?”.
If we were 100% right, there would be no reason to learn anything.
What would be the point of that?
Are we going to become more right about what we believe?
And this is generally what happens in people with extreme positions. They stop learning.
They think they don’t need to learn because they have it all figured out [even though they have almost nothing figured out].
The less they know, the more confident they are.
It’s like when a joint is unstable in the body.
When a joint is unstable, the muscles surrounding it become tight in an effort to create additional stability from what is lacking in the joint itself.
Even so, the extreme person becomes very rigid in an attempt to create stability in their life.
That extreme positioning is just an attempt to exert control on the world and to thrust some order on an otherwise random and chaotic existence.
We have to be aware of this human tendency so we can avoid mental fallacy and incorrect thinking.
Be constantly aware of your own thinking and analyze it regularly. Be a critical and independent thinker.
Only in this way can you find the truth.
