For every difficult question

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H. L. Mencken said that-or something like it. I first read the quote with "elegant" as one of the predicate adjectives, and I like that even better.

In whichever variation, one encounters this a lot. Imagine you are having a discussion with someone. You confide a problem, a quandary, a real head-scratcher-in theology, in life, in experience. And it is a valid point, perhaps a point or observation that is not usually admitted, not often dared to be spoken out loud.

Rather than your companion listening hard to your point and considering its validity, he is already mentally rifling through his theological Rolodex for a stock answer from his camp. "Surely we have a file on this," he is thinking. He feels he must hasten to debunk your point because it sounds vaguely like heresy, or at least incipient heresy.

We are creatures of systems. By "systems" I mean "theories," but theories that are super-rock-solid and airtight and impervious to challenge and falsification. Try talking a person out of a particular political party by adducing proofs or evidence. Fuhgeddaboudit. Over time, the system has become engorged with defenses and rationalizations, to absorb the most deadly arrows.

When it comes to discussions of the faith and doctrine, I find that Christians from one "camp" tend to react swiftly to insights from another camp, before they have even heard properly. They feel they must do this in order to defend orthodoxy. But the fact is that, as Peter says, there are some things difficult to understand (2 Peter 3:16). (Peter might just as well have written the Mencken quote.) There are some things that don't fit well into the systems.

If we would only stop and consider without feeling threatened, rather than pushing the automatic response button, we might find that the other person's uncomfortable insight has pointed out a weakness in our system that we would do well to consider.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.