Can I Think for Myself?

It's getting late and I'm trying to process some of what I'm readnig in Richard Niebuhr's book Christ & Culture. If nothing else, I find myself torn as I approach this book. It's sort of paradigmatic in how I feel about a lot theological issues--I really respect people who land all over the spectrum of opinions regarding how Niebuhr works out his ideas and it's hard for me to hear my own voice in my head because I hear so many others. I certainly want my thoughts and opinions to be impacted by my teachers, pastors, leaders, friends, theologians, various authors and just those who see things differently than I do, but sometimes I get lost in the faux dialogue that they all have with each other in my head. There's a sense in which I can't find my own thoughts in the drone of theirs. It usually takes me stepping away from the book/lecture/article/program to get the space to hear my own thoughts on it, though. Not that my own thoughts aren't influenced by theirs, but more that there's still a mediating factor in how I think sometimes. I haven't fully reckoned with their positions such that I can integrate their insights into a position of my own. Something that seems to come out here is my fear of being wrong or having an overly-simplistic view of something. I tend to want to nuance my understanding of things so that I can fully see and present all sides involved in the discussion. This desire sometimes conflicts with another desire of mine: to come to a conclusion. And this makes me tense up while I'm reading and gives me a headache--like right now. While I say claim to love the process of doing theology and the perpetual conversation it involves, I think I'm still very much learning how to let my philosophy and theology be in a state of development and growth, to be in progress so that conclusions can be fluid and subject to change. This, along with trusting that God guides me in the process helps me relax while I read, and enjoy rather than dread evaluating ideas.

Well, on with it now.