Thursday 10 January 2013

CONTROVERSY

'...we owe to people who differ from us to seek to understand their aims. What is it that they are looking for? What is it that makes them tick? What is it that they are recoiling against? What are the experiences, perhaps tragic experiences, that have steeled them into a particular stance? What are the things that they fear and the things that they yearn for? Is there not something that I fear for or yearn for in the same way? Is there not a possibility here to find a point of contact at the very start rather than to move on with an entirely defensive or hostile mood?'
Roger Nicole, 'Polemic Theology: How to Deal with Those Who Differ from Us'. Available at: http://www.founders.org/journal/fj33/article3.html