[November 2004 journal entry]
One consequence of my ‘historian first, theologian second’ methodology has been that, with each new layer of ideas to examine radically (i.e., to the root), fellow searchers fall back. When do they fall back? When they reach limits beyond which they cannot and/or will not go – e.g., limited by intellectual gifts, training, time, relationships put at risk, work, energy, motivation, personality type, lack of insight into the questions, lack of information, the ‘play out the hand’ stage of life, a retirement mentality, inability to multi-task (simultaneously act and reflect), . . . . Most individuals settle for minimal (if any) radically critical examination of the ground on which they stand, the foundation on which they build their lives. They are willing to depend on and to follow others who appear to have looked more carefully, who reassure them that the ground and foundation upon which their lives are being built are sound. Some among these leaders can be prophetic in the sense of stirring those who listen to action. Others among these leaders make careers out of pastorates or faculty positions for schools supported by constituencies with settled/comfortable experience on the ground/foundation that the career pastors and faculty members confirm/protect. I have found the number of individuals who persist in radical/unrestricted questioning of the ground/foundation on which they stand to be few.