Being familiar with the theological arguments for my position, and knowing the letter of the Bible very well, I was adept at using scripture to defend my positions and didn’t have trouble getting the best of many of my interlocutors, few of whom had given serious thought to the issues. Indeed, few things were more likely to strengthen my sense of the rightness of my stances than arguing with opponents. Spirited disagreements with adversaries can be curiously effective at heightening such confidence: the more focused one is upon the flaws in opposing positions, the less attentive one is likely to be to the issues with one’s own. […]
While considering myself to be championing the Lordship of Christ, I became fixated on contentious debates and increasingly dulled to the things of God. I openly affirmed Christian truths, yet they no longer stirred my heart as they once did, nor did they bear the same fruit in my life. The place that Christ had once occupied at the center of my thought and affections had gradually been crowded out with matters of culture war, theological, and political conflict, and party interest. […]
When I stepped back, the arguments, debates, and ideology no longer mediated my relationship with the text. I started to read it on its own terms; I started listening toit, rather than listening for things that served interests and concerns I was bringing to it. As I did, I began to feel the grain of the text and to learn to move with it. Biblical statements ceased to be brute facts to be marshalled into an extrabiblical system.