A Questioning Attitude

One of the most difficult things to be among the exclusive brethren is a thinking person. Thinking, it's safe to say, is not encouraged.

That's worried me for a long time. I mean, whatever else, a person should have their private thoughts. Cogito ergo sum. As far as I'm concerned, a person without thoughts of their own is barely a person in their own right - but perhaps that's the point. Not to be an individual, merely a small part of something.

But the situation is that each brother (and sister, but of course they count for less) must have a good enough connection to God to know precisely what He would wish to have done about anything, no matter how small or trivial. And the test of whether you have it right is whether it matches with what the man at the top thinks. If it doesn't, you are automatically wrong, and you must change your thoughts at once. No consideration must be given to why you originally thought what you did, and there must be no pause to check whether the new thoughts make sense, because that would be questioning the Lord's word. Delayed obedience, we are often told, is disobedience.

Yet, to me, this ban on questioning is more troubling in itself than any of the individual things that might be questioned. Mostly, about those, who really cares? But at root, I feel that only truths that have withstood all the questioning I can throw at them are truly truths. Truths which must not be questioned are immediately suspect. Why no questioning? Is anyone afraid they might not stand the harsh light of intelligent investigation? Often I feel I'm entirely alone in feeling that way.

That makes it more troubling that this attitude is not only being emphasised more and more, but that the envelope is being pushed too. It's as though there is a deliberate campaign to stretch what the general body of the brethren can accept. They've rationalised the last lot? OK, let's see what they make of this. Corners are being turned right left and centre, so to speak. Anyone stuck in their old thoughts is not keeping up. And we hear that The Man has spoken of deliberately appearing to be fake, which of course makes everybody even more eager not to doubt, however ludicrous a suggestion might be. I can't escape the suspicion that he's preparing the ground for an expansion of his working latitude. In the past, the scope for new rulings has always been somewhat limited by an inability to accept that any previous ones might have been wrong. But I believe we have almost reached the point where the entire rulebook could be ripped up, and the brethren generally would applaud the "new light".