God is currently teaching me how to lose arguments which is fitting for one such as I who is trying to become less and less dependant on human reasoning.
The thing that gets to me is that I like to joke about things, I like to admit where my case is hopelessly weak and enjoy it when others do the same. For instance, I remember once having a humorous conversation with a professor I had when I was Roman Catholic. He was Reformed, and we were discussing the problems of the Reformation. He joked that if I was willing to get rid of papal infallibility, he'd toss sola scriptura, and all of us could become Orthodox.
I didn't lunge at him and start attacking his views of sola scripture, I laughed, because there was a lot of truth in what he said.
It might be a history-person thing, Pelikan did it a lot in his writings, where to challenge a philsophical or theological point, you throw out a humorous anecdotal point to counter your opponent, not to 'prove' your case, but to lighten the mood.
It's like when Devin jokingly mentioned Martin Luther's views on James when I was defending his piety towards sacred scripture. It didn't completely level my views, but it was humorous, made me think, and realize the situation wasn't as simple as I'd portryed it.
It's good to keep a sense of humor and humility about things. And to laugh and even put stuff out there that defuses tensions is good. It makes us human. We are, all of us, very small!
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