THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Jimbo tells me repeatedly, and probably correctly, that my ignorant comments on theology make me look foolish. He is kind enough to say that my comments on other matters are often brilliant, but my ignorant ramblings on theology undermine my authority.

Jimbo is worried because he thinks the points I do make on matters I know about are important. He does not want people to lose faith in them because I make stupid remarks in other areas. I appreciate his concern.

But the blog is precisely where my little clique gathers. This is the place I CAN make a clown of myself.

When I opened the Comments section of the blog, I dropped some responsibility on YOUR shoulders.

In the blog, my ignorance is as important as my knowledge. My ignorance is the ignorance of a lot of people. I don't say anything that has not occurred to others. If I say things that need correcting, it is up to YOU to correct me.

When this blog started, I put this in caps:

DO NOT HOLD ME RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING I SAY IN MY BLOG.

Let me repeat that, since my putting this in shouting all-caps doesn't seem to have sunk in:

DO NOT HOLD ME RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING I SAY IN MY BLOG.

The blog is not a class. The blog is a seminar. This is an old man meandering through his thoughts. You can learn from that. An intelligent person can get a lot out of what I say. But what you get out of it is up to you.

But this is where I learn, too.

I want to have a place where I can make a fool of myself.

This is what us Southerners call "porch talk."

When I was in college, many people would say, "I got my real education in the bull sessions."

This is the bull session.

This is the porch talk.

A man who thinks he knows everything will never learn anything. All my life I have found that the most important things I learned I discovered by making a fool of myself.

It is amazing. You can sit down with an Authority on any subject and ask respectful, diplomatically-worded questions and he will give you carefully worded almost-replies. You won't learn a thing from him that he has not already written for publication.

But if you make a flat statement that hits his sore point, he will dump everything he knows on you. He will get back to basics. He considers you a fool, and he wants to prove it.

Many an Authority HAS made a fool of me.

But I don't mind at all. I am not worried about how I look. I am listening carefully to the basics he is talking about that he would NEVER have gotten into if I had been respectful.

My strategy is to make it perfectly clear that he is dealing with an over-educated redneck from Pontiac, South Carolina. And when I make the flat statement that infuriates him, he realizes I am not just being modest.

He goes ballistic, and he tells me what I want to know.

I call this moral courage.

If you are afraid of being made a fool of by The Great Man, then you will get nothing out of talking to The Great Man. You should stop talking to him personally and just read what he wrote.

None of the Great Men I ever talked to ever got bored. They either really can't give me the basic answers I wanted or they go away feeling satisfied that they showed that moron what a fool he was.

Meanwhile, said moron has gotten exactly what he wanted.

Unlike the Great Man, I know that I will always be a fool. But I hope to be the fool you need.

I want to be a good fool.

I want to be God's Fool.