Point weak — shout!

All the shouting in the health care debate got me thinking about values formation. (I bet that's what jumped into your head too.) That’s the part of developmental psychology I studied way back when.

I remember the stuff about adolescents grouping up. How they dress like their group, talk like their group and absorb all their group's values as a way of dealing with the scary on-your-own-ness of those years.

When they head out into a larger world and sense fissures forming in the group-think, they face some hard decisions. Will they let their closed system open up and re-form in a broader, more resonant way? Or will they turn back. Will they erect elaborate defenses for a rulebook that doesn’t quite work anymore.

We cycle through those choices many time in our lives. And it’s not always easy to decide whether to move ahead or hang on.

After my pastor-father died, I inherited his library — a lot of great stuff there. I found one book dated from the 1940s. I won’t get the number in the title right, but it was something like, “472 Bible Problems Solved.” I remember thinking, if you’ve got to twist and turn that much, you may be approaching the Bible the wrong way.

Dad also used to tell a story about a preacher who wrote in the margin of his sermon notes: “Point weak — shout!”

A lot of the shouting we’re hearing right now sounds to me like the unconvincing lines of defense we erect when we’re standing in an indefensible place.