Scripture says, “Iron sharpens iron. And one person sharpens the wits of another.” But for iron to sharpen iron the swords, the blades, must conflict. Blades piercing flesh does not sharpen iron. It is the creative, redemptive friction of the two blades respectfully colliding that leads to more truth on the matter. According to the apostle Paul, nobody, self styled conservative or liberal, sees with 20-20 vision. “We all see through a mirror darkly.” We see now but we do not see clearly. We need help from the Spirit and the Church to even know what we are looking at.
The scripture says the entire church, in all of her God given diversity, is the fullness of God, not the single person in the church. So an internet “fellowship” of uniform lock step opinions does not reflect the multiethnic, multicultural, and diversely theological Church of Jesus the Lord. Our opinions shrink us and the church. Jesus enlarges our hearts!
The Greek rhetoricians hundreds of years before Jesus denounced the ad hominem “against the man, ” arguments that in debate attack the speaker and not the ideas of the speaker. It was thought to be a virulent form of sophistry- a way of speaking that did not expose truth, but rather hid the truth and also harmed the social order- the body politic. It is iron bludgeoning reputations and tearing at the fabric of the human community.
No democracy was believed able to survive this sort of harsh sound-bite if required to feed on it night and day. The sophistry that Aristotle and Plato attacked has too often replaced “speak the truth in love” as the dominant speech of Christians in public.
Everybody who disagrees with us is a “delusional liberal” or a “ bigoted fundamentalist” or the “antichrist” or “dimwitted.” Declaring Obama is the antichrist or Trump is Hitler evidences our fallenness. It does not bless either man or a world struggling to survive. It does not advance the truth or the kingdom.
Loving speech is a verbal sacrament- an in breaking of the Kingdom in a world where “the darkness is deep.” Loving refers not only to the tone and content of our speech, but to first respectfully listening, a valuing of “the other, ” before verbally responding. Check out Jesus at the Well in Samaria—listening and talking across political, ethnic and theological lines to see how it is done!