Guinness a little hard to swallow
It's shortly after seven o'clock on Wednesday morning in Cape Town, South Africa. I'm walking down the already bustling street headed for a breakfast spot and a steaming Americano.
"Hey, Doug," I hear. It's a fellow Canadian on his diligent way to an early meeting. "What do you think about the conference so far?" he asks. We're three days into the conference—three long days overwhelmingly packed with presentations. What do I think? "I think a thousand things," I replied. "Where should we begin?"
So we talk about a particularly forceful presentation that isn't sitting well with many Canadian attendees. It came from Os Guinness, a highly respected and erudite former Brit now living in the U.S. He's a very thoughtful and articulate man who presented the case for truth.
"At first sight, a biblical view of Truth is obscene to modern minds," he began. "Yet it is profoundly relevant even to those who reject it."
He then went on to make six blistering points bolstering the need for a high view of truth. And it turned out to be an all or nothing proposition. "If we do not stand for Truth, this congress might as well stop here. Shame on those western Christians who casually neglect or deny what many of our brothers and sisters would rather die than deny. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life."
Unfortunately, the narrow time constraints did not allow Guinness to explain his meaning of "truth" with any precision beyond references to "biblical truth." But that is cliché in this place. What we actually mean by truth varies immensely from person to person, culture to culture, context to context.
But the colonial tone of the presentation was even more problematic. I suspect that Dr. Guinness is a humble and congenial man in person. But the platform persona was that of an Oxford don—ruddy and certain—fulminating and finger-wagging laggard students into a correct understanding. He spoke with a powerful, uncompromising tone that brooked no further questions. It came across as sloganeering.
Ironically, Guinness did speak in a manner obscene to postmodern minds. Is the problem on the part of the speaker or listeners? Many of us are eager for truth. Indeed, we are eager for Truth. But this voice was over-amplified to the point of distortion.
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