Reflection for July 18

An Opposable Mind
Roger Martin introduced to business world readers the idea of an "opposable mind." As a human thumb allows us to pick up stuff, so leaders must hold together the irreconcilable until some new possibility merges. Others have written about how much Martin's description sounds like the gospel. Christians have to affirm things in tandem that the world prefers to pull apart: evangelism and social justice, piety and prophesy, tradition and innovation, biblical fidelity and engagement with the newest, sharpest ideas. Heresies, Rowan Williams argues, are always simplifying movements. They lop off part of the truth and guard it at the expense of the whole. The Arians weren't wrong to say the Son is a creature. They just weren't right enough: he's also the eternal Son of God. If he weren't divine, then he couldn't save us creatures. (Jason Byassee: Opposability in Johnny Cash)