With All the Mind . . .

FALLACIES OF IRRELEVANCE

We are saying in this series that the mind matters. Even when God is out to touch the heart, which is the essence of religion, he does so through the mind. Feelings are vitally important for a meaningful faith, but those feelings are to be anchored to an informed, logical mind. To say “I feel it in my heart” can be both shallow and deceptive unless emotion is grounded in God’s revelation. By revelation we do not refer to dreams and visions that most every enthusiast comes up with, but to those principles and ideas that the Spirit of God revealed to the chosen envoys of heaven, the apostles of Jesus Christ.

This is what the apostle is saying in Eph. 3:2-3. “The stewardship of God’s grace,” he says, “was given to me for you.” Given to me for you! Paul calls this revelation in verse 3, and says he wrote it down so that it might be read and understood. He makes it clear in verse 5 that such revelation is made known only to the apostles and prophets through the Spirit. We can rightly be suspect of any other claims to revelation. And we can thank God that he has revealed his will in such terms that we can understand by the application of our minds, provided they are open and searching. If we really desire to understand, we will be on guard of the fallacies Satan uses to divert our minds. He will even bamboozle us into believing that the mind does not really matter all that much. It is not principles and ideas that are really important, he will tell you, but your feelings.

Some logicians, for the sake of simplification, place all fallacies within two categories: irrelevance and ambiguity. These sinister twins do more havoc with human thought than can be imagined. They are handmaidens to Satan’s design to sell the human race a bill of goods. What better way can evil forces warp our souls than by confusing our thinking? A logic book beside me lists thirteen common fallacies of irrelevance. These are, unfortunately, as common in the church, including the pulpit and the press, as in the world. One of the most prevalent is called appeal to force, which uses threat and intimidation to get folk to accept a given conclusion --- such as attending every service of the church. It is a willful sin that incurs God’s wrath to miss a single service! Christian reasonableness would have us make the assembly such a joyous and edifying experience that we could not keep the people from coming. To browbeat those that are there with irrelevant threats of hell and damnation is not only foolish but a contradiction to the very idea of Body life.

The “band-wagon argument” provides still more irrelevance, and we get our fill of this in the media, where some sexy macho from Marlboro country implies that we just aren’t with it unless we smoke like his kind do. Did you ever see some emaciated weakling advertising cigarettes? And of course they place a dazzling dame beside everything from automobiles to breakfast cereals. This fallacy begins to lay a heavy hand on us as kids in school. Peer pressure is the most powerful motivating force with our young people. That “everybody does it” is reason enough to experiment with drugs and sex. There is no easy way to combat this evil, and it certainly does no good to panic and blow one’s stack. A quiet and loving appeal to reason sometimes works. Think and act for yourself! is an appeal that may reach the finer instincts.

But before we gang up on the kids we should face the fact that in the church we are worse than they are in riding the band-wagon. We often parrot the party line when we haven’t the slightest idea what we are talking about, and we’ll join in and criticize “the other church” or “the sects” because it’s the accepted thing. We’ll put down some brother that we don’t even know, and who may be a delightful Christian, only because everybody else is down on him. If we uncritically and illogically follow the preacher, we should be more tolerant of our youth when they follow the crowd. We all need to learn that a band-wagon does not necessarily go to heaven. God may not be interested in your appeal to “the way they do it in Nashville” or “our preachers have always taught it that way.” Conclusions should be drawn from the principles and ideas that God has revealed to you in scripture. Your Bible may be saying to you (as we may say to the kids), Think and act for yourself! If that puts you on the band-wagon, OK. If not, walk alone. You’ll probably find others who have “taken the way not traveled,” as Robert Frost liked to say it.

One of the most insidious fallacies among our churches is called “fallacy of accident,” which is not well named. It is the error of supposing that a general rule applies to every situation. It does not recognize that “accidental” circumstances may make the rule inapplicable in some cases. It may be generally true, for example, that sporadic church attendance reflects a lack of commitment, but that hardly applies to the dear sister (whom some would judge) who does well ever to attend the assembly at all, considering her brutal treatment at home. Lying may always be questioned, but we have to recognize that there are lies and then there are lies. Our judgments cannot be the same in all cases. Even the young people that are shacked up together may deserve less censure, depending on circumstances, that some of our “proper” couples in the way they live together - in the event we have to censure at all.

A cruel use of this fallacy is in reference to the divorced. They are told that divorce is a sin and that one is to quit sinning when she becomes a Christian, which means she is to dissolve her second (or third) marriage and “make her wrongs right.” This has reached serious dimensions among Churches of Christ, with some congregations denying baptism and membership to the divorced. There is far more wrong with this than a fallacy of irrelevance, for the premises themselves may be questioned. It is true as a general rule that reparation should be made for wrongs done, but it cannot be applied to everything in life that goes wrong. We can apologize for an offense and we can repay stolen money (usually), but how do we undo the damage of a broken marriage? Too, another marriage (Jesus acknowledges that the divorced who remarry are married and not just living together) is now on the line. Divorce may have been a sin, but it is fallacious to conclude that all sins can be dealt with in the same manner. Some things in life are, unfortunately, irreparable. God’s mercy receives a person as she is in her penitence and allows her a new beginning at that point, without having to do the impossible with her fractured life.

The last fallacy considered here is irrelevant conclusion, which has been eating our lunch all these years. This is the case when an argument claims to prove one conclusion, which may be relevant, when in fact it proves something else, which is not relevant. A good example of this is the case of a very fine Abilene professor who has written a book on the case for acappella music in the church, which is presumably a contribution to “the music question.” The book has received good billing for years and the professor has been called on now and again to lecture on the topic --- the case for not using an instrument, as if that were the issue.

I wrote to this professor that his conclusion is irrelevant to the issue it proposes to address, for no one questions a place for acappella music. The issue is whether our sisters and brothers who elect to use an instrument are sinning, or whether we have the right to make the way we do it a test of fellowship. This fallacy is also present when we labor to prove some person or church wrong on particular doctrinal issues, as if being wrong led to the conclusion that such ones either are not Christians or not deserving of our fellowship or both. It may be conceded that the Baptists, for example, are in error about certain things; but it does not follow that we can therefore have no association with them. To prove that one is in error (and who isn’t on some things?) does not prove he is not a Christian. Indeed, our exclusivism is built around a cluster of irrelevant conclusions.

Our irrelevancies in fact well nigh do us in on every front, like the pharisee that thanked God that he was not like other men. He was in bad shape and didn’t know it, counting himself as righteous while setting all others at naught. We talk about our growing budgets and increasing contributions, and even sometime venture to say, “We’re doing more for missions than any church in the city.” In the light of this fallacy the response to all such is, So? It is also the response to our frequent efforts to justify our sins, such as “If I never do anything worse than that. . .” So? What we often affirm (assuming it to be true) does not prove what we are implying. OK, you have no worse sin than holding that grudge against the sister that put you down. Assumed true. Does that mean you are righteous? OK, the Baptist minister across the street is wrong about some things he preaches. So?

We started with a word about principles and ideas, through which God has revealed something of his will to our minds. This is the stuff of which logic is made. We are to think about what God has revealed, pondering the ideas and studying the principles. Principles can be drawn only from what God has revealed. Those who speak of “the principle of silence” are talking nonsense. No logical conclusion can be drawn from what the Bible does not say, except that it does not say whatever it does not say! We can reason only about what God has revealed, and reasoning is the drawing of conclusions. It is not appropriate for us to reason or draw conclusions from what God has said nothing about. It is the essence of irrelevancy. If God has not revealed it, it is presumptuous as well as irrelevant for us to draw conclusions about it. If you check it out you will find that most of our difficulties are over things that are not clearly and distinctly revealed.

I’ve been reading Luke lately. The beloved physician was a master of detail, using facts, principles, and ideas to suit his purpose in laying the gospel before Theophilus. Luke wasn’t quite satisfied with any other record, possibly not even Mark’s, at least not for the purpose at hand. Facts. Luke gathered them like a researchist working on a Ph.D. thesis. If one reads this account with a mind open to one question, What is he saying to Theophilus?, it opens like a morning flower and comes alive in God’s light.

Luke was a logician par excellence. He “followed all things closely for some time past,” which means that he applied his mind to it for a long time. His purpose was to assault Theophilus’ mind with facts, “that you may know the truth.” He allowed for no diversion. No monkey business. He stayed with facts, ideas, principles, the stuff that scripture is made of. This time around in Luke I was impressed with the simplicity and the logic of the narrative. Luke believed that the mind matters, and he was writing for the sake of being understood.

If all the Bible would mean this to us, a hunger for what God has revealed, what a blessing it would be. Facts, principles, ideas from God’s revelation in scripture. We will naturally tend to be reasonable and logical when we are committed to what is revealed. When we turn to our visions, dreams, speculations, theories, and even to “what God revealed to me,” we are moving away from the facts of scripture and are likely to get into serious trouble. When you have the likes of the wonderful story Luke told, what need have you of visions and revelations of your own, especially when you remember that others have still more visions and revelations, all in competition with each other?

To give in to fallacies of irrelevance is a bum rap and a hard way to live. It stifles the mind and feeds sectarianism. It suppresses our nobler instincts for growth and freedom and locks us in to a small world that keeps getting smaller. If we will love God with all our minds as well as with all our hearts, he will give us free, expanding minds, joyously luxuriating in the glories of what the Spirit has revealed. If the mind really matters, it really matters what we do with it. --- the Editor