Guarding against intellectual impatience

Ben Witherington recently posted a worthwhile essay on intellectual impatience in the North American church. Here's a sample:

There is a lust for certainty about all kinds of things in and out of the Scriptures in the Evangelical or Conservative Protestant world and sometimes that 'itch' is scratched in ways that does [sic] no service to Biblical truth, and no justice to the Christian community. Sometimes it leads to fear-based practices-- take-overs of schools and churches because of the fear that something has been or might be said that does not square with one's particular narrow reading of Scripture, or even just because we do not like what has been said, even if it is perfectly Biblical!

It is a mistake for the conservative church to buy into and become a part of the problem of "the closing of the American mind". We need more dialogue, not less, more study, not less, more understanding, not less. More openness to learning and fresh insight, though of course as my grandmother used to say-- "don't be so open minded that your brains fall out". The call of the Protestant Reformation was 'semper reformanda' always reforming, and we certainly need to hear and heed that call here at the cusp of the 21rst century when it comes to our use and abuse of the Bible.

Amen.