Pride, Prejudice And Papers
Someone suggested a few days ago that the editors of "our' 'papers ought to get together and decide what the truth is and then all stick to that decision. The honest suggester thought that would cure all the division in the brotherhood, "for brethren," said he, "all follow one of the papers."
God forbid! I don't want any committee of editors deciding for me what the truth is. I will decide that for myself. And every reader of every paper in the brotherhood should feel the same way. Neither an infallible man nor an infallible paper exists. No man, nor committee of men — even though they be editors — can tell me what to believe.
Catholicism has a set-up like that. No good Catholic has to wonder what the truth is. He has an infallible pope to tell him what to believe, and that's it. Politically, Russia has the same things. Under such regimes truth isn't truth at all — it's whatever the dictator wants to make it.
Your task as an individual is not to follow the thinking of some paper. You ought to be able to arrive at a conclusion yourself. One will ask, "How can I decide what is truth?" Use your head. That's what it is for. The helpless "... how can I?" is sickening. The individual must weigh everything presented and swallow nothing. He must establish the relationship and the reliability of every bit of information from every source. He needs more than one paper. He needs more than one preacher, one school, one elder, or one teacher. To blindly follow any paper is as foolish as following the pope.
One of the penalties of being a free moral agent is that you have to think. You have to form conclusions for yourself. It makes no difference how long brethren or papers have held a certain view, if they are wrong, they have held those views too long. Any length of time is too long to be wrong.
The sheer joy of discovering new truth is reserved for thinkers.
And thinking to the extent of reaching an independent conclusion isn't easy. It requires a lot of work after the average man has already punched the time clock and gone home.
If you don't think, somebody will think for you. My {why,} anyone can parrot information he has heard from another, or read in one of the papers, If someone else, regardless of how honest and sincere he may be, does your thinking for you, the blind is leading the blind. Every utterance of every teacher and of every paper, should be examined critically, not accepted blindly.
On the other hand, honesty demands that critical examination be made in the right spirit. Almost every editor has seen his work butchered by unchristian and dishonest men. There are the distorted emphasis on words, the twisting of phrases, and undertones and overtones that give different meaning to plain teaching. The difference in quoting what a man says, and in distorting what he says is the difference in telling the truth and telling a lie.
All this emphasizes the great responsibility that rests upon every editor, whether it be of a church bulletin, or a religious journal, to present in an ethical manner the facts. Because from such sources people arrive at their conclusions. But neither editors nor readers need a "committee" to tell them what is the truth. That is the one thing that must be arrived at by independent action.
We receive many letters from brethren who say, "... But I don't agree with you." That's fine! Someone is saying, "I'll do my own thinking." Brethren are flooded as never before with a torrent of different views, and the only thing that can possibly keep sectarianism from splitting the church into fragments the willingness of brethren to do their own thinking. Each must search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things be true. The Bible — not some paper — must continue to be our rule of faith and practice. Loyalty to the word of Almighty God, rather than loyalty to a paper, is the important thing.
It makes me not one whit of difference whether I agree with any other editor or paper in the world — nor preacher either. But it does make me some difference whether I agree with the Word of God. That I am anxious to do. Then, if I find myself in accord with others papers or preachers — that's fine. It will have resulted from our both going to the same source of authority — the Word of God — for our rules of faith and practice.