Christian Mandate to Critical Thinking

My book, Murder by Accident: A Grit and Grace Mystery, is filled with acerbic observations about American Christianity. As I wrote, I questioned my motivation for having taken a stance somewhat “above” the characters in my book. I wondered if my conscious superiority was somehow unChristian or ungracious. I prayed about this circumstance and was sent to the following texts, one sacred, one secular.

Robert Burns,
To a Louse
On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An foolish notion:
What airs in dress an gait wad lea'es us,
An ev'n devotion!


Ezekiel 43:10-12 (New International Version)
Son of man, describe the temple to the people of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their sins. Let them consider the plan, and if they are ashamed of all they have done, make known to them the design of the temple—its arrangement, its exits and entrances—its whole design and all its regulations and laws. Write these down before them so that they may be faithful to its design and follow all its regulations.

Throughout the Old and New Testaments, believers are mandated to examine themselves, their faith and everything they accept as truth. (Lamentations 3:39-41; Acts 17:11; I Cor. 11:28; II Cor. 13-15, etc.)

God told Ezekiel to measure the temple, not because Ezekiel was sinless or superior, but because God gave him the measuring line. I believe that through the circumstances of my life as a thinking, questioning, suffering Christian, God has given me the tools to measure the temple and the insight to pick the lice off of ladies’ bonnets, maybe even my own.