Mandatorians

In the spirit of No Quarter November, Douglas Wilson has thrown a final bone to his readers on Blog & Mablog, responding this time to Relevant Magazine’s questioning why some Christians simply won’t get v@ccin@t3d. The quotes are many, but here are some of the more memorable moments:

You tell me that because I am no scientist, I don’t know which side has the information and which has the misinformation. No, but I know which side won’t let the other side talk. I know which side is appealing to arguments and which side is appealing to the form of reasoning known as “shut up, they explained.” I do know that. 

and later:

The old “loving your neighbor” ploy, eh? So let us work with that a little bit, shall we? If you disagree with unaccountable bureaucrats about the best treatment options for someone whose life you genuinely value, you are accused of somehow not loving your neighbor. So let the apostle define love for us. “Love is patient, love is kind. Love seeketh not its own, and agreeth at all times with federal bureaucracies.”

Douglas Wilson

Say you are a trained EMT, and you come across a bad traffic accident. You are the first on the scene, and another fellow joins you right afterwards. He was in the car behind you. He starts to move the driver of the car, who was thrown out of his car, and you tell him not to do that. It looks like his neck is broken, and it will need to be immobilized before he can be safely moved. With me so far? But suppose the other guy who is helping out—a really nice guy, but one who works in accounting at a big hardware store—tells the EMT that he really needs to “lay aside his opinions” and “think of others first.”

The EMT thinks, but does not say, that this is no time for an argument about words. But if it were, he could point out, mildly the first time, that his opinion, trained and everything, was actually an opinion about how best to think of other first. And you don’t think of others first by breaking their necks, however well-intentioned. You don’t lay aside your opinions about how best to love others, in order to love others.

In other words, before we start impugning the motives of others in the debate (loving your neighbor, egad), we need to assume that everyone’s motives are fine and settle the question of fact. What in fact is the best thing to do? 

But what Relevant magazine means to say is this. Because they are not going to lay aside their opinion on what it means to love others, this requires you to lay aside your opinion about what it means to love others, and you need to do this in order that you might love others.

If you have trouble following that, perhaps it is because you have a heart of stone.

Read the full article, titled the Mandatorians, here.