How do we know what we know? How do we determine our position, or what we believe, on various issues? We all combine different sources of knowledge in different ways, resulting in a highly personalized position mixtape.
The four sources of knowledge are Scripture, personal experience, reason, and tradition. How we mix these often determines our position (kind of like your preference for a certain kind of music can determine how you build a playlist). But your mix can also lead to heated disagreements or misunderstandings with people who stack these sources in a different order… especially those who may not share your beliefs.
Each source of knowledge is a gift from God, and they’re meant to be used together. We may know Scripture should be our primary source, but… do we live that way? Different cultural eras tend to lean more heavily on different sources of knowledge. In our age and culture at large, personal experience seems to rule the day!
These sources influence not only our position but our posture toward those who disagree with us. Here we see how personal experience is a huge help in our communication: It gives us our own particular lens of age, ethnicity, background, brokenness, and so on. The more we learn to see how someone’s experience shapes their position, the more empathy and love we can bring to the relationship. This should open us to challenge their assumptions–and let them challenge ours–because experiences are not infallible.
Jesus and Paul both defused divisive arguments by pointing to people with differing mixes back to the truths of the big story God is telling through our world (John 8:1-11; 1 Corinthians 1:10). This perspective causes us to raise our eyes to what really matters in our approach to life: the glory of God and the fullness of truth.
We love like Jesus loved not just by trying to convince others of our positions, but by first understanding how they have arrived at their positions. Then, we can invite them to address the true heart issue: trusting that God can guide us towards the fullness of truth together!
Questions:
- How would you rank the importance of these sources in your own life, based on how you form your beliefs and responses? Do any of them seem overemphasized, undervalued, or out of order? How does your stack impact your relationships in life and ministry?
- Evaluate your experience of each of these sources. How does your lends for life color that experience?
- Observe the story of Jesus and the adulterous woman (John 8:1-11). What was His position? What was His posture toward her? Toward teh Pharisees and onlookers?
- Think about a specific issue where you often encounter conflict. How could you redirect the discussion the the big story of what God is doing?
