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14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, 16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? 17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. 18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. |
Freedom of Expression (thought/speech/assembly) and Handling Disagreements/Encouraging Research
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1. The knowledge of our religion and of the truth of things is independently manifest rather than in need of human teachers, for almost day by day it asserts itself by facts, and manifests itself brighter than the sun by the doctrine of Christ. 2. Still, as you nevertheless desire to hear about it, Macarius , come let us as we may be able set forth a few points of the faith of Christ: able though you are to find it out from the divine oracles, but yet generously desiring to hear from others as well. 3. For although the sacred and inspired Scriptures are sufficient to declare the truth — while there are other works of our blessed teachers compiled for this purpose, if he meet with which a man will gain some knowledge of the interpretation of the Scriptures, and be able to learn what he wishes to know — still, as we have not at present in our hands the compositions of our teachers, we must communicate in writing to you what we learned from them — the faith, namely, of Christ the Saviour; lest any should hold cheap the doctrine taught among us, or think faith. in Christ unreasonable. |
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The same applies to thinking. If you want to be a good thinker it's not enough to read/listen to other people's thoughts, you need to do some thinking of your own.
With that point established, lets do some thinking.
Freedom of Speech
Is this principle biblical?
- If we look
Individualism versus Community
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This principle is a corner stone of Western Society. I believe it is one of the primary reasons Western Society has come as far as it has in such a short period of time, historically speaking. It is also the basis of the ability to accomplish great things. Without the freedom of thought and by extension freedom of expression, there can be no personal growth and by extension no advancement in society in general.
People in general need to be able to express themselves and put their thoughts out there without feeling the threat of being cancelled if their views do not conform.
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2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. 3 For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. |
One criticism which can be raised against this argument is within the church we have immutable doctrine. However, this doesn't deny the right for people to express their questions, doubts, lack of understanding. In order for someone to gain a better understanding of these immutable doctrine, one must be able to examine them, understand their history and prove them for himself.
For example, let's take the doctrine of the Trinity. From my personal view many times when this comes up we tend to go down the road of trying to explain it using pictorial images like the triangle, or the sun and the rays, etc. While these are good for a young child, it is not effective for older youth. It doesn't help them grow, because these images are themselves not proof of anything. They need to be able to derive this conclusion from their own research, or be guided by understanding the source of this doctrine. The trinity is not something humanity invented, it is a divinely revealed truth. And it's not something that the church has come up with from thin air. Therefore, we should be able to provide guidance for people to go and do their own research and be able to arrive to the same doctrine. Not everyone is interested in such research, but I'm talking about the people who do want to understand more in depth. This should be encourage, even if their thoughts portrays disbelief or doubt.
If we believe we have the truth we shouldn't fear contradictory thoughts. Truth always prevails.
I would argue that it is good for the general strength of the church to allow freedom of thought, because that leads to people who believe not because they are forced to or because they are told not to question, but because they are truly convinced. This leads to a strong community.
Another argument against freedom of expression is that if you have contradictory opinions you might cause disagreements and it's hard to deal with disagreements. Disagreements can be viewed as something that shakes the confidence in the institution. A rebuttal would be to say this:
There are different types of disagreements or differing views. Ones which revolve around non-immutable points and another revolves around immutable doctrine. I do not say that there should be a compromise on the immutable doctrine. However, we should be able to prove these immutable doctrine using infallible proofs. And we should not raise the non-immutable points to level of immutable doctrine, because if everything is immutable doctrine, then there is nothing immutable anymore.
Thus far I described two approaches to the principle above:
- Discouraging freedom of expression in fear of the blowback it could cause. This is the culture of the middle east
- Encouraging freedom of expression because it produces stronger societies
If we look carefully we now see a breakdown in this principle in our society, where this principle is being distorted. Freedom of expression and thought is being carried out to an extent where there is no common ground anymore. Freedom of Expression assumes that there is a standard by which we all must live with; God's standard. And we are all trying to express ourselves with the hope of reaching that ideal.
The culture though has abandoned that standard and therefore, we find ourselves taking this principle in an unnatural direction. We have people saying that they speak their truth, as if truth is a subjective concept. We have people trying to live and express harmful ideas and stopping their ears from listening to any reasonable arguments against their point, because it would be offensive to them. They defend their stand by saying we have the freedom of expression. But by disallowing arguments and cancelling the opposing point of view, they are denying that principle to others. Therefore the pendulum has swung in the other direction. By allowing a subgroup freedom of expression but denying another group the same, there is no longer freedom of expression, but tyranny.
Reverence of the elderly and those in positions of responsibility
This brings me to the
Two opposing personal experiences:
- For a period of time I used to sit with Uncle Magdy on regular basis to discuss different topics. And the man is a lot more informed and knowledgeable than me. If you look at his practices, he did a lot of research, a lot of reading, a lot of prayer. He was a thinker. And when we talked with each other it wasn't a one way monologue, but rather a discourse. I learned a lot from him, but I disagreed and still disagree with some of the points which came up in our discussion. Does that mean I disrespect him? Not in the slightest, but disagreement is not equal to disrespect. We can disagree with each other yet respect each other's point of view tremendously.
- On the other hand, one time I was reading a book by Pope Shenouda and he said something (which I can't remember) that I didn't necessarily agree with. I mentioned my disagreement to a fellow I knew, and his response: "Who are you to disagree with the Pope". And on another occasion I was mentioning a thought about Pascha and the response was "Are you going to correct me, sonny".
You can see the stark differences in both of these encounters. In the first one there is an inherit encouragement for the freedom of expression
Individualism versus Community
Dialogue versus Monologue
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