as Dane Ortlund tells us, there is a very fine but recognizable line between defending truth and defending one’s own honor.
…..I’m struck by my own and others’ inability to discern between concern for the truth and concern for being right. One cares about God’s honor, the other about mine. Yet what we assume to be truth-concern as we type our blog comment and hit ‘submit’ (a more inappropriate verb could not have been picked) is often self-concern.
How easy it is to act on that sense of truth-violation we perceive in others when it wells up within us, yet the intense emotion of that moment may so easily–so, so easily–simply be a desire that we be seen to be right. It’s alarmingly natural to pass off cantankerous or scoffing comments as concern for truth when really it is just a form of self-vindication.
what is your reaction to that?
HT to Justin Taylor