Debate Culture and the Death of Mystery

Certainty, Algorithms, and the Loss of Formation

I used to get blocked by others for arguing with them, but yesterday I was blocked by someone for refusing to argue with them.

If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, you know: the algorithm loves debate. The more controversial, the more provocative, the more confrontational a conversation becomes, the more the platform rewards it. TikTok, YouTube, and countless other spaces are now cluttered with live feeds of endless debates—some over meaningful issues, but many over topics so vain and unresolvable that they exist purely to generate heat without light. Resolution is not the goal. Engagement is.

I fear that we are being conditioned. Conditioned to see conversation as a contest where appearing certain matters more than substance. Conditioned to treat dialogue not as an encounter with mystery, but as an exercise in domination. We are learning to prefer quick answers over deep questions, polished certainty over the humbling ache of wonder. We are beginning to act as though we are professional debate judges or referees, imposing the rules of logic and debate onto every online interaction. Social media is becoming the place for dopamine addicts and egomaniacs to find their fix.

This spirit is bleeding into the Church as well. Figures like Charlie Kirk have built entire platforms around debating as Christians, turning faith into a series of viral confrontations. Others, more brazen grifters, have followed suit, realizing that controversy sells just as well in religious spaces as it does anywhere else. More and more, Christians online are pulled into this algorithmic appetite for controversy. Baptism, the incarnation, politics, and faith—no topic is too sacred to be turned into content. It is not that the church hasn’t had a long history of healthy debates, many of which were necessary and helpful, but we don’t debate like members of a spiritual family anymore; we debate like contestants in front of a crowd. It’s tempting. Views go up. Followers increase. The adrenaline rush of "winning" tastes sweet. But it comes at a cost.

Debate for the sake of debate or viewers is vanity. And often, debate for the sake of argument gives way to the worst parts of our nature: pride, defensiveness, and cruelty. Instead of nurturing faith, it nurtures pride. Instead of cultivating mystery, it cultivates certainty. And a faith without mystery is a brittle faith indeed— one that seeks to control rather than to trust, to master rather than to marvel.

This has long been my discomfort with Christian apologetics, especially as deployed within modern evangelicalism. It often feels like we are putting the Bible and our church doctrines on trial—debating their credibility, weighing their exhibits, rather than embodying their truths. We behave as if we are jurors in the jury room deliberating over them as though they were secondhand pieces of evidence, rather than as if we were the living witnesses on the stand whose lives have been changed by them.

The individual who blocked me for refusing to argue with them about baptism pointed to the apostles' reasoning in synagogues and public spaces as a defense of Christian debate. But I wonder if he misunderstood the setting. The synagogue was the centerpiece of Jewish communal life—a gathering place that shaped identity, nurtured belonging, and embodied shared faith. It was not a platform for performance; it was a home for shared wrestling, a space where neighbors gathered to seek God together. Jewish debate was not a contest to win, but a way of learning together. It was rooted in a living relationship with one another and with mystery, not in a thirst for dominance. Whatever arguments took place, they were among neighbors—not strangers chasing virality. The spirit was different. The goal was different.

As I’ve wrestled with these tensions, I came across Michael Hardin’s reflections on the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, emphasizing the importance of engaging all four sources—Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience—to fully know Jesus. Hardin describes how Christ is made known to us through four streams: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. He offers a living portrait: “Scripture becomes the Textual Jesus, Tradition becomes the Ecclesial Jesus, Reason becomes the Historical Jesus, and Experience becomes the Risen Jesus” — and warns that "no one alone suffices. Not even two or three suffice."

What strikes me, and troubles me, is how easily American Christianity has leaned almost exclusively on reason and Scripture. We have elevated argument and text as if they could bear the whole weight of faith by themselves. Tradition and experience — the living memory of the Church and the personal encounter with the Spirit — are often treated as optional or suspect. And in the process, something vital is lost. Without tradition, we sever ourselves from the wisdom of those who have walked before us. Without experience, we lose the dynamic, living relationship with the Risen Christ who still moves among us.

A faith built only on logic and texts becomes dry, transactional, and defensive — always ready to argue, rarely ready to adore. It becomes a faith eager to prove itself right but unable to be transformed or transform us.

Hardin reminds us, “We know Him together as His Body. Those who would focus on one extreme or another will never know the beauty, the reality, the joy that is Jesus, Lord of all creation, reconciler of all creation and redeemer of all creation.” It is in this fullness, not in clinging to any single mode of certainty, that the mystery of Christ is preserved.

“We know Him together as His Body. Those who would focus on one extreme or another will never know the beauty, the reality, the joy that is Jesus, Lord of all creation, reconciler of all creation and redeemer of all creation.”

Michael Hardin

Mystery allows us to approach Jesus not as a problem to be solved, but as a Presence to be lived with. Mystery is what guards us from the illusion that faith is something we can master. It invites us instead to be mastered by grace.

Faith was never meant to be proven. It was meant to be lived. It was meant to be practiced slowly, patiently, humbly — a long surrender, not a conquest.

When we trade mystery for certainty, something inside us withers. Our prayers become arguments. Our communities become crowds—and we all know how deadly crowds are. Our faith becomes a performance we must sustain, rather than a love we are sustained by.

Living with mystery is not easy. It asks more of us than certainty ever could. It asks us to trust what we cannot always explain. It asks us to remain faithful in the silence. It asks us to find Christ not only in our answers, but in our aching.

Debate has its place. Honest questions sharpen us. Good arguments can refine us. But when debate becomes the primary action inspired by our faith, when winning replaces worship, when certainty replaces surrender, we lose something sacred.

The world does not need more Christian debaters. It needs more Christian witnesses. Not those who conquer arguments, but those whose lives themselves are the argument. Not those who wield certainty as a weapon, but those who carry mystery as their hope. Not those who win, but those who love.

Christ is not found in the comment section. He is found in the broken and blessed places of real community, where we are slowly, vulnerably, imperfectly formed together by the Spirit who still blows where He wills.

May we find Him there.
May we be found by Him there.