Thought for the Day from Jim Elliot |
by Diane Singer |
From The Journals of Jim Elliot come these words about impacting culture:
This problem of meeting a culture with truth from God is the most difficult kind of thing. One comes as a renovator, a conditioner of society, and society is in no mood to be conditioned. Each man has his fixed concepts and supposes that he has arrived at them originally, giving himself the credit of thinking by insisting, "Here's the way I look at it." Then he proceeds to say what his teachers, parents, and friends have taught him, who, in turn, repeated what their teachers, parents, and friends have taught them. The fixedness of the mind is as the walls of Jericho to Gospel preaching. God must shake, or there will be no shaking.
One gets the distinct impression from the quote the Jim had the idea that ... his own thoughts and words came from some source other than what his own teachers, parents and friends had taught him. As if he believed he had access to ideas that came from some ... purer or better source than the sources of the ideas of those with whom he was trying to communicate.
Which is to say he comes across as amazingly arrogant. A character flaw I know a bit about myself. (takes one to know one, I guess =)
Posted by: Benjamin Ady | June 26, 2008 at 01:27 AM
I was with you right up to the last paragraph, Benjamin, and then you lost me. Where I think you're making a mistake is that you appear to be suggesting that Jim Elliot was saying that any purer or better source that existed could only be Elliot himself -- an idea with which I believe Elliot would have vehemently disagreed.
Posted by: Gina Dalfonzo | June 26, 2008 at 08:37 AM
Benjamin's comment reflects the reigning philosophy that all truth is subjective, that there is no objective truth, i.e. God does not speak.
Posted by: Michael Snow | July 13, 2008 at 05:34 AM