The Argument That Almost Won

“See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.” — Colossians 2:8 (ESV)

As a teenager Amanda thought of herself as a believer, but a casual one — she said her prayers, kept out of trouble, and figured she would get serious about God someday. Then she picked up a book. It was written as a debate between a Christian minister and an unbeliever, and she opened it completely confident: “I know the Christian minister will win.”

He did not. Or at least, the book was rigged so it looked like he did not. The way it was written, the skeptic’s questions were sharp and clever and given the most space, and the minister’s answers gradually shrank and lost ground. By the last page, Amanda said, the unbeliever “seemed to gain all the ground.” And here is the thing she was honest about: she could not remember the Christian’s arguments at all anymore. But the skeptic’s case was “stamped on my memory and spirit.” She had read one book and quietly stopped being sure God even existed.

What makes this story so useful is what happened next. She did not become a bold, happy atheist. She became afraid and secretly miserable. She was scared someone would find out. She kept reading more of the same material “to strengthen me in my new light,” and every book pulled the knot tighter. She wanted out and could not find the door. She was, in her own word, snared.

She got free almost by accident. Her aunt came to visit — a plain, no-nonsense believer like Amanda’s mother — and as they walked across a long bridge the aunt said something about how wonderfully God had made the sky and the water. Amanda saw her chance to unload and fired her best skeptical shot: “How do you know there is a God?” Her aunt did not argue. She turned, looked at Amanda with a look that “went through me like an arrow,” stamped her foot, and said she would not even talk to a girl raised the way Amanda had been who would say such a thing. And that broke the snare. Amanda felt it lift in that instant. She was always convinced that if her aunt had argued point by point, she would have stayed trapped for good.

Take two things from this. First, what you read and watch and scroll is not neutral, and it is not harmless just because it is “only ideas.” A single well-made argument — or a hundred short ones fed to you by an app that knows what keeps you watching — can move you somewhere you never chose to go, and you may not even notice you have moved. Amanda was intelligent and sincere and got captured anyway. Being smart is not the same as being safe.

Second, the way out of a snare of ideas usually is not out-arguing it alone at one in the morning. It is often a real person who knows you and loves you and will not debate you — who simply refuses to accept the frame you have fallen into. That kind of person is worth having, and worth being.

One thing to do: look honestly at the one voice, channel, or feed that has quietly shaped how you see the world lately. Ask yourself: is it making me more truthful, or just more sure of things I never examined? Then take it to one older person you actually trust and say what you have been thinking out loud. Snares grow in secret.