The Straw Man

I don’t know if you are familiar with the concept, but it gets used a lot in politics. The person speaking creates a fictitious situation or idea, attributing it to the opposing side, and then proceed to dismantle it as if they have proven theirself and their position. The problem with this is that many of the “straw-men” are fictitious or unfairly paint the other in a negative light. It really only works for the side that created it because the opposition group is offended by the example. Why am I bothering to explain what politicians do? Because I believe that many in the church are doing the same thing and it does not bring unity. A Baptist tries to dismantle Lutheran theology without really understanding it. A Lutheran might try to cast the Catholic church in a very negative way. A Catholic church might... and so the endless circle of straw-men continues. Well, shouldn’t we try to defend our church? Actually, “No”. We should be defending the word of God. Now if you believe that your church is correctly understanding the word of God, then you defend that word. When we create a “straw-man” to tear apart another church body, we will lose the opportunity to witness to that “denomination” because they are offended by the false representation. If we took more time to understand the teachings of other churches, we may find that we are very close on multiple topics. In the areas we don’t seem to have agreement, we need to try to understand where the person is coming from before we begin to bring any judgement. Once we feel we understand their position and where they see that in Scripture, let us defend what we believe as of first importance rather than trying to tear another down. If we rightly understand God’s word, then let that word be the power behind any change that follows. I remember reading that during revivals, they often had a section where people were encouraged to go to commit their lives to Jesus. The problem is that many admitted that they used manipulation to get people there so that their record of conversions would look good. Coercing someone to change their position by focusing on winning the debate rather than winning the heart speaks to our ego and not a heart of humble service. Father God, help me to present the truth in love so that the hearer not only understands, but they hunger to grow in faith. Amen