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Primitive Christianity Revived, Again

Why, Why Not: Collective Quaker Discernment Processes

God may 'be on' more than one side of a disagreement.

The truth about an issue might not match the position of any party to the dispute... and then the best available resolution could not be expressed in one logically-consistent proposition, but in ongoing tension between differing formulations. (Hence the success of "fuzzy-logic" programs in applications for handling real-world situations. Though precise algorithyms should theoretically work as well, in practice they turn out fragile. )

But if an issue matters to people -- as theological issues once did, as political disagreements continue to do -- We ought to try for a valid resolution. In practice, the effort makes for extreme demands on time and equanimity.

One person -- or any number of people -- can be mistaken. This can be about simple matters of fact, about interpretation of facts, about the rightness or wrongness of possible responses --

and above all: When are people or individuals correctly heeding the voice of God in our souls? -- or unknowingly deceived by constructs and illusions of our minds and hearts?

The most common traditional formulation of that issue is that members need to "test" leadings against the discernment of an appropriate committee. I repeat: Any number of people can be mistaken, even if they cross their hearts and stand on their heads.

No one is free to renounce a leading because of some procedural "test"; this is between God and him after all. But he does need to know whether it is truly is a leading -- and whether he's correctly 'hearing' its meaning.

It won't help to calculate the odds of more people being wrong about that: Their opinions aren't likely to be mutually independent, but rather strongly linked by common influences and group pressures.

Indeed, in Quaker processes they are supposed to be linked by one common Divine influence -- but is that, in fact the strongest influence they're responding to? -- the very question at issue.

Given the difficulties, do we need to make the effort? I fear that sometimes we do.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 9th mo. 25, 2016 at 8:18pm

Even when someone benefits materially from tendaciously-distorted statements of a situation, it's probably best not to assume conscious hypocrisy as the motive. Even where that is a factor, fears which the person may not be consciously aware of may be the decisive motivation.

It's probably most fair -- certainly to such a person's conscious understanding of his condition -- to start from the assumption that nobody really wants to lie, to imagine himself forced or obligated to lie, to be mistaken or to be unconsciously compelled to uphold a mistaken position.

Neither do members of a Meeting want to support another member's support, in the Meeting's name, of a misguided position. Yet they don't want, either, to deny support for a valid leading, a stand resulting from a member's direct guidance from God.

If a good and devout member requests a minute of support for promoting the use of nuclear power, for example, under a misapphrension that the technology is less than catastrophically dangerous, or at least is needed to stave off the ongoing human destruction of the world we live in... that, to my mind, is an example illustrating the difficulty of such decisions.

In the case of someone's personal theological beliefs as to their experiences and the framework in which he interprets such experiences, this seems (at least in Liberal Meetings) not to be the concern it once was, so long as the person is not claiming to represent his Meeting in his profession.

But it might well be a matter of concern to any individual so concerned. Is it right, or in any way necessary, to consult with others about it -- particularly if their interpretation leads them to take implied political stands in the name of being apolitical.

Setting up an externally-guided method may be entirely inappropriate... but should someone in that situation consult with others as to how their intuition leads them to view his condition?

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