More thinking is required, and we should all exercise our God-given right to think and be unafraid to express our opinions, with proper respect for those to whom we talk and proper acknowledgment of our own shortcomings. We must preserve freedom of the mind in the church and resist all efforts to suppress it. The church is not so much concerned with whether the thoughts of its members are orthodox or heterodox as it is that they shall have thoughts.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of free thought and respectful expression of opinions within the church.
Hugh B. Brown advocates for the exercise of one's right to think independently and express opinions openly, stressing the importance of respecting others and acknowledging one's own limitations. He argues that the church should prioritize allowing its members to have diverse thoughts instead of enforcing strict orthodoxy, thereby championing the freedom of thought as fundamental to spiritual and intellectual growth.
In practice
During a church meeting discussing community values.
Sometimes during solitude I hear truth spoken with clarity and freshness; uncolored and untranslated it speaks from within myself in a language original but inarticulate, heard only with the soul, and I realize I brought it with me, was never taught it nor can I efficiently teach it to another.
Seek the truth in all fields, and in that search you will need at least three virtues: courage, zest and modesty. The ancients put that thought in the form of a prayer. They said, “From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth, from the laziness that is content with half truth, from the arrogance that thinks it has all truth – O God of truth, deliver us.
The most sublime truth of all has never been stated or written or sung. Not because it is far away and can not be reached, but because it is so intimately close, closer than anything that can be spoken. It is alive as the stillness in the core of your being, too close to be described, too close to be objectified, too close to be known in the usual way of knowledge. The truth of who you are is yours already. It is already present.
The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's mind. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means the capacity for doing without . . . the average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.
I want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own.
No voice comes from outer space, from the folds of dust and carpets of wind to tell us that this is the way it was meant to happen, that if only we knew how long the ruins would last we would never complain.
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