Consider the Source

There is a logical fallacy called, "ad hominem" ... "to the man." It's an attack on the person, not the logic. Not the argument. One kind attacks the person directly. Another bases the attack on hypocrisy or inconsistency. Or maybe it's based on a perceived bias. Very popular is the "poisoning the well" version where they convince you not to listen because of other perceived errors in advance. Or there's the "tu quoque" variety where, for instance, a person is caught in a lie and accuses the other of a lie to discredit them. "Oh, yeah? Well, you lied, too!" All in the same category of ad hominem. The problem is they're at attack on the speaker and doesn't address the argument. So, for instance, when some Christians hear that C.S. Lewis had some bad theology, they refuse to read anything he wrote. Was what he wrote wrong? They'll never know.

I've found it interesting to read some of that "bad stuff." A guy I worked for gave me a book titled, The Lost Books of the Bible. He assured me I'd see how our Bibles are unreliable. The introduction said they accumulated the book so you could read this apocryphal stuff and see for yourself that it's not Scripture. And it really did. I saw, when I read it, how it clearly wasn't inspired. The result? My faith was bolstered. I think we are shorting ourselves if we don't examine the claims of the opposition to see where they miss the mark. Obviously it has to be done carefully. Clearly a reliance on the Holy Spirit is necessary. But I've found that it can be encouraging to actually see the error, and I don't think we can address the error of other views if we don't know what they are.

It's not for everyone. It is work. But Paul said, "Examine all things; hold fast to what is good" (1 Thess 5:21). So some of us ought to do that. Avoid the obvious error. We don't need to be dwelling on it. I still think that we can gain from seeing the error and answering it. Consider the source. Sometimes God can use a donkey to tell the truth (Num 22:27-31). He can use even me.