I actually haven’t deviated from my stated intent to file three posts following specific themes. It just turns out I get to make one of the same points using a different object lesson. This should be the last lesson from this source.
*********
Be arrogant if you must. Be ignorant if you must. But don’t be arrogant and ignorant. This is a John Immel original aphorism. I accept royalties.
In some Christian circles, the accusation of arrogance is worse than the charge of misogyny in a National Organization of Women Conference. This stems from the fact that in these circles, Pride and Arrogance tend to be synonymous, and Pride becomes a catch-all spiritual failing: tossed within an utterly erroneous notion that humility is manifest in self-deprecation, self-doubt, and self-destruction. Whatever… This all ends up being “Method and Manner” fraud.
Arrogance is nothing more than the assumption of superiority and anyone who has worked to achieve any level of expertise or mastery, by definition, has earned that assumption. This does not preclude weakness, or inabilities, or failures. Indeed, someone who sets out to be a true master of any discipline works relentlessly to be aware of their weakness so they can remedy and overcome. The road to mastery is nothing more than an iterative process of increasing self-awareness.
Self-AWARENESS is an encompassing state: a macro vantage point over the sum of self; the ability to place all of one’s abilities, skills, talents, expertise, greatness, weaknesses, ignorance, lacks, intemperance, and ignobility in context to reality.
By way of contrast, self-ABSORPTION is a prohibitive state: a micro vantage point with no sense of the sum of self–a willful ignorance of self in context to reality.
My aphorism is designed to identify this state of self-absorption. Being arrogant and ignorant is the worst of all worlds. If one does not know what they don’t know because they are unwilling to ask (or more insidious, willing to HEAR), they can never, ever, find an effective solution to any life problem. This kind of SELF is narrow in perception, and indulgent in action.
We all know people like this. To some degree, we were all like this: think teenager. Think adolescence. Most parents know to bite their tongue and wait out the stupidity, praying to God that eventually self-awareness will spring eternal. If not, maybe God will let us eat our young.
We tolerate such self-absorption out of teenagers, sort of.
- Their willful ignorance: the belief that they know everything while making no effort to know anything.
- Their belligerent evasion: purposely hiding behind hostility and indignation when confronted with error.
- Their argumentative legalism: playing the strict literalist game when linguistic games suit, and flat ignoring the violation of basic principles and common communication intent.
- Their lip service to forgiveness: the demand for moral absolution while demonstrating no willingness to change conduct or attitude.
- Their conduct blank check: the fundamental expectation that others must pay for their moods, intemperance, laziness, inability, and lifestyle.
- Their relational presumption: the belief that they can act however they want because Mom and Dad are obligated to suck up their intemperance.
- Their moral equivalency: “Well, yes, I’m sorry but you did THIS. So you are no better than me.”
- Their petulant emotionalism: the endless manipulation of feelings-criticisms are catastrophic hailstorms of excrement and compliments are disproportionate sonnets of love, beauty, and butterflies.
We grant grace to all of these self-absorbed failings because we understand it to be a developmental stage–a finite period of time where young psyches work to get that macro vantage point on self. We wait for the emerging self-awareness because we believe the developmental cost will be far exceeded by the relational value a healthy, productive, valuable adult can contribute. In this environment with this expected outcome, love, and forgiveness, and grace, and mercy spring from a deep, deep well.
It is from this expected outcome, this deep, deep well, that God approaches us.
Inasmuch as we see people seeking the path to self-awareness, we are willing to embrace them on the path. But our energy shrinks to a dull ebb when we realize that arrogance and ignorance are combining to create the perfect storm of self-absorption and the inevitable self-indulgent outcomes.
Injustice grows exponentially when the self-absorbed, self-indulgent soul can demand moral absolution in the name of Christianity. When “Forgive Me” is uttered in belligerent command and moral absolution is the required response, mercy and grace have lost their meaning. When any person can write a moral blank check with the expectation that someone else MUST cash it, values, and justice, and proportion, and boundaries have been reduced to ash.
This is exactly how Christian Forgiveness is currently being taught: that the magic words of “forgive me” are sufficient to the cause. And if that doesn’t get the immediate moral absolution, the next bit of sanctimony is the moral relativism of “We are all just dirty rotten sinners.” The overt proposition is “You are not any better than me, so someday you will need someone to wink and nod at your bad stuff too.”
Any unwillingness, any hesitancy to immediately declare all actions pardoned, any intemperate outburst exonerated, and all intimacy restored is met with sanctimony: “How un-Christian,” or “How unloving,” or “How hardhearted.” The result: people are browbeaten into accepting circumstance and relationships that are vicious, unhealthy and destructive.
As a brief aside, it is this doctrinal insanity that keeps women in marriages where their husbands are self-absorbed, violent scum who repeatedly commit adultery: who alternately terrorize their families or abandon them with impunity. He stands in a pastor’s office and speaks the magic words, “forgive me.” With this enchantment, the woman is placed in an impossible position.
No matter how many adjectives we try to apply to this woman’s plight–loving, long-suffering, merciful, gracious et al–to make ourselves feel better in the face of profound injustice, she is further victimized by the self-absorbed, self-indulgent, useless piece of humanity, and then incarcerated by doctrines that are dehumanizing, unjust, and destructive.
It is true that God granted divorce because of the “hardness of people’s hearts,” but we have misunderstood who’s hardheartedness is the culprit. Divorce for “biblical” reasons is an act of self-preservation and self-defense against the violence of hardhearted action. (Make no mistake, adultery is personal violence of the most brutal soul-wrenching kind.) If the hardheartedness manifests in the person seeking divorce because of adultery, abuse, abandonment, why grant divorce at all?
Did I go to far afield with my last two paragraphs? Maybe, and then again, maybe not. The underlying theme of this post is what relational boundaries are people required to keep in the face of self-absorbed, self-indulgent, arrogant, AND ignorant conduct?
It is to this I will now turn my attention.
For those of you just tuning in…I’m not going to detail the sum of Paul Balluff and his wife, Me Love You long Time, interaction. You can find the bulk of their comments on Who’s Your Daddy, Reform or Not to Reform (in the last hundred comments), and Paul Balluff Lessons.
On May 25th, Paul Balluff found a pingback on the post Arena of Ideas. Here is what he said.
Paul B on May 25th, 2009 7:00 pm
Hey – I thought this using of other’s names was a ONE time thing, John?
Paul Balluff Lessons | spiritualtyranny.com on May 8th, 2009 3:28 pm
[…] adding their 38 cents worth. They don’t agree. They say so. No biggie. This is the Arena of Ideas where it is more rough-and-tumble than other living rooms. Someone might hand me my ass in my […]
How, pray tell do you have the gall to add my name to such a vile statement and call yourself a Christian. Oh, my mistake, maybe you aren’t.
Leave the profanity to your members and keep my name off these–if you want to toss out a pithy statement, please refrain from attaching my name to it.
For those of you who don’t know, a “pingback” is a blogging thingy that lets blog owners know when someone has referenced a post. Any time a hyperlink is posted, it “pings back” to the original. I do a lot of internal linking because so many of my thoughts are interconnected. Hence, the pingback from the post Paul Balluff Lessons to the post Arena of Ideas.
Anyway, onward…I of course was mystified by Paul’s reaction and comments because everything in the pingback was in the original post and presumably Paul had already read said post with said profane reference. A post with his name on it????
Ah, yes…silly me presuming that Paul actually read the post. He has repeatedly said that he makes no effort to follow the details of the conversation. Here is what he said when called to account by Juli.
Paul on May 26th, 2009 9:52 am
To Juli- I do not live on this or the other sites dedicated to those with a gripe to pick over life in or out of SGM. Therefore, I missed the Arena of Ideas and in a quick scan, thought that the above saying was attributed to me. I am man enough to say that I jumped to a conclusion that it was something that I had supposedly said – I was wrong. I hope you are woman enough to see how impolite you were in your response. (“you won’t get your ass kicked…”)
On a side note to all on these blogs- Had a good three-hour talk with Jim (SGMRefuge) last night. We left on excellent terms. As I hope can be said here.
John – same apology to you here -my bad
In Christ,
Paul
There is soooooo much here.
Your bad? Your bad what? Your relational incompetence? Your intellectual ineptitude? Your blogging presumption? Your utter lack of self-awareness? Your admitted willful ignorance? Your horrific doctrinal deficiency? Your nonexistent critical thinking skills? Your endless intemperance? Your ridiculous attempt at apology? Your feeble attempts at manipulation? Your pathetic sexist appeal?
Which bad thing are we talking about, Paul? The list is growing and growing and growing.
Frankly, I’ve seen teenagers with more self-awareness, and if not self -awareness, enough embarrassment at their own ill conduct that speaks to some self-consciousness.
Let’s see…am I saved? Hmm…well, if I’m not, maybe that explains a lot. But here is the thing. I’m not sure I see how that works out better for you?
If I am not saved, does that mean I get a moral and ethical pass? Does it increase YOUR obligation to overlook my conduct? So, as an unbeliever, does that mean I get to shoot you in the head and it’s just all good: leave your wife to forgive and forget? My conduct can’t be helped after all: I’m just an unsaved sinner? Right? It is by the Grace of God that such things don’t happen more often? Right?
Paul, you won’t follow this to save your life. You have shown no ability to follow a progression of thought, so I am confident this will sail right over your head. So, I am going to say it for those pastors sent to keep up with subversive material.
You guys suck at teaching your own body of doctrine. How is it that you can have a true SGM believer that can utter such inane doctrinal words? Come ON guys…my salvation demonstrated in using the word ASS? And not even jackass or stupid-ass or ridicule-ass.
How is it you have been so incompetent at teaching the doctrine of election? How is it you still have pew-sitters who CANNOT, for one second, remain consistent in their intellectual grasp of “Sound Doctrine”? How can comments, like Paul’s, be a criticism? If I am not saved, if I am not a Christian, there is not ONE thing I can do about it. So, my reprobate conduct is part and parcel of God’s Sovereign will.
He can parrot the SGM doctrine of pervasive depravity pretty good. He has absorbed the corresponding moral relativism that you all use to absolve yourselves of any and all relational failures…so how is it your pew-sitters fail to get the REST of the doctrine? From the way you advertise your doctrinal purity and monolithic presentation, this should be unacceptable. These pew-sitters should be getting demerits or something because they are NOT paying attention.
Anyway…
See, here is the insanity embedded in this whole dynamic. When it is something I’ve done, you get to rail about the quality of my salvation. Paul, when it is your manifest relational incompetence, you get to put on a Roseanne Roseannadanna act: “Oops…Never mind.”
Hommie John don’t play that game.
I can tolerate a lot. I have been more than generous with this platform. I have let you rail at liberty against the people and the content of this blog. I’ve let you and your wife accuse me of all manner of nefarious motives and actions. I have even let you justify yourself in an argument with Jim and Carol at www.sgmrefuge.com. That would be like me going to Dale O’Shields’ church and co-opting his mic to justify myself to SGM.
In all of this I have been (mostly) magnanimous.
I gave you ample time to explain the content of your lesson. I realize now you have none.
I even had flashes of letting you hang around for the comedic entertainment: as Jim is fond of saying: “That is almost funny.”
But what I cannot and will not tolerate is you presuming to give etiquette lessons to Juli. The irony in your thinking to define “impolite” is rich. And the further irony in your determination to make self-awareness a measure of your “man hood” makes me howl with laughter.
But comedic relief withstanding, that is the last straw. That is the single greatest manifestation of arrogance and ignorance that I can imagine.
You are not welcome here, Paul. There is no reprieve. I have no interest in further interaction. You are tedious, and have shown yourself willfully ignorant, arrogant, and thus irrelevant. Go co-op another blog to justify yourself if you must. But you have posted your last here.
The price of admission to this blog is both cheap and expensive. The price is self-awareness. You have no coin of the realm.
****
To all, If a comment sneaks through, ignore it till I get it deleted.
umm….I told his wife you used nukes John..she didn’t relay that information apparently.
<watching the mushroom cloud rising up in the background>
this time it isn’t a hoax: Paul is “dead.”
(that was my obscure Beatles reference just for you Dan!) 🙂
Thanks Juli.
Man, this “Arena of Ideas” place is pretty bruising.
I suppose it is far too easy to just sit back and pick and choose what you want to respond to. I figure if Paul really wanted to sit and really examine what he thinks is true and think it through, he might come back with different answers. Then again, maybe not.
Thinking through a progression of ideas is more challenging, especially if you question one node or level’s “truth.” Or even question a specific part of the equation ie., A=B, then C must be true (or much later down the progression such as if M=N, then O must be true).
I’ve come to the realization it is better (and much harder) to try and listen all the way through a series of ideas before making my own judgement.
The Arena of Ideas is not for the meek.
Wow, that was certainly a whopper of a final lesson. I see it like this: You have a hugely muscled gladiator whose experience in the arena is massive. He is looking for someone to cross swords with, as a bit of practice. He comes across this inexperienced man, who hasn’t used his muscles in a lonnnnnnng time. The gladiator tries a little sparring, but the man has so little strength as to make the whole sword fight quite a bore for the gladiator.
This is similar to participating in the arena of ideas. As Dan said, it is not for the meek. It also isn’t for those who choose not to listen or learn, but just like the sounds of their own voices. We have to come to the arena prepared to learn, to rethink strongly held ideas that are unsupportable in God’s thinking.
In this one life I’ve been given, I wish to seek the mind of Christ, in order that I might live for God and not myself. I seek more of Him and less of me. To do this, I should be willing to face my own ignorance as I listen to others who speak wisely.
If you aren’t willing to learn, the arena of ideas is not the place for you. I have to say, I’ve reached my “$4.oo limit” with a certain poster. Good move, John.
well, Paul walked into the arena thinking he was that massive gladiator….in reality, he didn’t even have a weapon in hand. Not even one of those little plastic swords you stick fruit thru and put in cocktails.
Juli, there you go, cracking me up again!
I wasn’t just referring to the subject of this latest thread. There have been so many drive by’s on the different blogs who just can’t hold up their end of the debate, because they aren’t thinking freely for themselves. They spout off only what they’ve heard or been taught. So, they resort to insults. Frankly, the time spent trying to have a discussion with them is just a waste. I don’t mean to sound like I know it all. It’s just that it makes me binge out on chocolate bird seed. Bleh…
you know what I respect in another person? Their ability, freedom, and willingness to think. Period.
I don’t have to agree with them, or they with me. I’m a big girl, I can have an in depth conversation with someone with completely different views, and still walk away respecting them as an individual and feel no need to convince them differently.
I don’t have to agree with them, but I respect their right to their own beliefs: good, bad, ugly, and even insane.
But the minute their agenda comes out, and they start trying to change ME or MY ideas? Nuh, uh. That reveals much in a person in my mind. Their inability to respect me as a person by their insistence to change me reveals, as John said about Paul, complete self-absorption.
Ironically, I see more of this agenda-pushing in Christian circles than anywhere else. It’s so annoying.
Either someone is trying to convince me to be a KJV-only, a Calvinist, an Arminian, a cessasionist, a paedo-baptism believer, a tongue-speaker, a pew jumper, a literalist Bible thumper, trying to get me to wear a head covering, dress modestly, whatever….it’s all about the same assumptions: they are right and I am wrong and they feel the need and right to change me.
Ugh. No wonder so many people despise Christians because most of them have agendas.
Their jacked up teachings run along the lines of: God loves you just as you are and you there’s nothing you can do to earn salvation…now change, start going to church, praying all the time, and reading your Bible every single day! (better make it KJV only!)
Here is the very dirty little secret. We are all in the arena of ideas ALL the time. It is ALWAYS a brutal place. We are always combating someone with a better sword, better skill, better preparation. Most people are unarmed and unarmored.
There are four types of people. The Unintentional Feeble Minded Soul. The Unfocused Passive Minded Pseudo Thinker. The Disenfranchised Cynical Intellectual. The Intellectual Visionary.
The Unintentional Feeble Minded Soul is mostly harmless of simple folk. Those people who do not have the requisite awareness to be intentional about their existence in the arena of ideas. As a result they will tend to be irrelevant in the tides of human thought. They will be part of the tide, but they will never shape the tide.
The Unfocused Passive Minded Pseudo thinker are those people who are aware of their ideas… sort of… but they choose a hazy, foggy, indistinct intellectual existence. They don’t like focus because they don’t really want the responsibility of their thoughts. Their intellectual arguments almost always revolve around an appeal to authority. There arguments are stock variations of: “Well, umpty ump master thinker said this … and I agree with them.”
These people tend to be very smart but intellectually passive; unwilling to do the work associated with the ideas they say they hold near and dear. They tend to be offended at a challenge of their ideas. They usually decide they have done enough work to know what they know… and further discussion threatens their entitlement to stagnation. These people unfortunately are profoundly easy to influence with the right social and emotional levers. Because of their implicit passivity and intellectual obstinacy, these people tend to be at the forefront of most tyrannical social, political, and religious movements.
The Disenfranchised Cynical Intellectual are those people who want to focus, want desperately to grasp the cause and effect of their ideas, and the outworking of those ideas in human existence. But intellectual pursuits have let them down.
They populate the freshmen and sophomore class in college, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to take on the great ideas the world has to offer. By the time they are juniors, they have been made so cynical by the disjointed presentation of ideas and have absorbed so much Calvin/Kantian metaphysics and epistemology that they withdraw into their own worlds.
Over their lifetime they are beat about the head and shoulders with things like: “You think too much,” or “that is what you get for thinking.” Or, “you have a spirit of prideful intellectualism,” or a dozen and one other overt criticism of their inclination to UNDERSTAND the world.
For most people it is merely a failure of education. It has never been explained to them why ideas connect… why ideas create the cause and effect of their actions, attitudes, emotions, and outcomes. This group of people has been sold into slavery by the intellectual leaders of a culture. The intellectual leaders have failed to do their job, or worse, the intellectual leaders succumb to the social pressures created by wrong, evil, wicked and destructive ideas. The leaders quit resisting and showing people HOW to resist, leaving this group leaderless and unequipped to retreat to worlds of its own creation to survive.
This group of people is the sleeping giant of every culture. This group of people is the driving force of true Cultural Revolution, (not of the Communist variety) true liberty, and freedom and blessing and prosperity. Because this group of people effectively armed and armored are the sentinels, the warriors, that carry effective ideas into the farthest reaches of human life defending those who cannot defend themselves and destroying the indolence of the unfocused, stagnated soul.
It is to this group and this group alone that I care to speak.
Hi Juli,
I have a question. What about the people who want to change, badly, but recognize themselves in the type of person you describe above… could humiliation be a stumbling block to someone who would desire to make that change but recognizes the total inferiority of their ability to disseminate ideas the way that you can?
Or is humiliation a part of the journey? Before anyone comes to that place of taking full responsiblity for their thinking and seeks to understand it and change it, were they not just the same as the person who tries to change your thinking that you describe above? who neglects to respect your boundaries? And being that I see so much of that still in myself, am I unwelcome to try to discuss and embrace what I so badly want to understand but know yet lies beyond my reach?
Maybe I speak from a place of complete self-absorption or maybe I speak for others who would long to join in but can’t quite determine if they’re good enough or have changed enough in their thinking to even make it through the doors.
The thoughts and ideas–the arena–here can be very intimidating. People who fail are brought to task, and royally. What about the ones who wish to be a part of this new way of thinking, but stumble and screw up completely along the way… what can they do to undo or to gain the right to once again pursue the freedom of thought that they desire without feeling like utter failures? or is the failure part and parcel of self-awareness which would lend itself to furthering the development of the correct way of viewing themselves and this world? Maybe that’s it.
So it’s painful and that’s tough, but if you want to take that step, then better beware… yes?
I only want to understand and to change the thinking that needs changing. But I deserve–in my heart I know this–the same words that were shared here with Paul. And that makes it a terribly frightening thing to even show my “face” here.
To hell with anonymity,
Teresa
This is a very good summation John. I want to cringe a little (okay, maybe alot) when I read about the Disenfranchised Cynical Intellectual (DCI person).
The DCI person has to take alot of crap to exist in this world. He or she tends to be a loner in my experience (which is my experience BTW). What is so wrong with wanting to UNDERSTAND why A must equal B?
God gave us minds to think with. He talks about “reasoning” with Him. The NT tells us to “think on these things”, to let our minds be changed to the way God thinks. If we are indeed true believers, our ultimate goal should be to get God’s thoughts on all matters. Jesus did nothing apart from His Father. Neither should we.
This requires waiting on God, reading His word with the Spirit’s insight. It is okay to listen to teachers preach the word, but we should know enough of scripture to test the spirit of that teaching. As John points out, we cannot be passive in this.
Bree,
Ignorance is acceptable, as John said. As is arrogance. It is the combination of the two that makes it insufferable and impossible. And also prevents the person from ever really “getting it”.
You are not that combination as a person, I hope you know that.
I think you and I have different perspectives on what constitutes humiliation and what purpose, if any, it would/should serve. But to answer your question, no, humiliation is not always part of the journey. Each journey is different, based on the beliefs and ideas of individuals. It is those very ideas and beliefs that in turn determine the journey and the specific application of truth in their minds.
Our individual thinking tool boxes, as I like to call it, vary from person to person. (disclaimer: I like that term but didn’t coin it, there is actually a homeschool curriculum called that but it is an easy illustration that I use with my son to explain why it is important to use our minds and how we do it)
Everyone’s tool box varies based on what they are doing in life and who they are as an individual. Some are more proficient with some tools more than others, some have tools they rarely use, some use all their tools, some have more tools than others, some have broken tools, some have no tools…do you see the picture here?
The tools represent the ability to think critically, to use logic, to make informed choices, to be able to articulate personal convictions and opinions, to be able to use reason, the ability to hear disagreements and contrast them, to use dialectic methods…etc.
If someone is in the Arena and has a plastic kid’s tool box, I certainly don’t make fun of them simply because they have plastic tools. But imagine this same person walking in with that type of tool box, expecting to fix a car, for example. They don’t know there are better tools, they don’t know their plastic tools could never do that job, etc – they are ignorant.
Now suppose someone walks up to them and tries to point this out by saying: “Hey, did you know they make tools out of steel and iron and metal now? They are superior tools for the job you want to accomplish.”
If that person refuses to listen, because they believe their tools are sufficient for the task and will not take the time to investigate what metal tools might do, or even if they exist, this would be the arrogance.
So the combination of the two, you see how it doesn’t work…it’s one thing to have a shoddy set of tools, and not know it. Or to be arrogant thinking you have the best already – when you clearly don’t. But how can a person ever better themselves if they are ignorant and arrogant? How do you interact with such a person?
You don’t.
Dan, I know how you feel…I was a DCI person. Love that term by the way, John! Totally accurate in my estimation and experience.
And by the way, the people that accuse DCIs of thinking too much are the other two types of people who don’t have the desire or ability to really think. Esp the pseudo passives who are offended at your willingness to ask questions they are unwilling to ask.
When I realized I don’t have to apologize for the way I think, or that I even do think, a huge burden lifted. Knowing that it is ok to be who I am? – liberation at it’s fullest.
And it opened the way to becoming an intellectual visionary..which is rather cool.
I am working on becoming an IV. I can think of no better place to work out stuff than the Arena of Ideas. Sure you can get battered and bruised — but it’s all about the journey, right?
It’s the journey that makes life so fascinating!
Not trying to be too Zen here… but it is about the journey. Since truth is endless, it is never a destination…. it is not a place to arrive, but a method of living.
And to my way of thinking, it is the most interesting way to live.