Detachment Can Be a Good Thing

Detachment is usually not a good thing. It is bad for a friendship or a marriage. Christianity is centered on God’s attachment to us, and our familial ties as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. To be detached can imply not caring, not invested, ambivalent or peripheral.

So in what way can detachment be good?

• It is good if we are not so “attached” to our writing that we can’t see its (sometimes glaring) weaknesses.
• It is good if it gives us enough objectivity to understand a different/new perspective without excess emotion.
• It is good if it means we can examine an idea with no other goal than understanding the argument behind it.
• It is good if we can analyze and critique concepts without having to embrace or reject them wholesale.
• It is good if it helps us to examine logical fallacies (false arguments) in some of our own assumptions and beliefs.

If you really care about something, use your passion to understand it in all of its subtleties. You will be better able to persuade others if you are willing to examine your ideas and beliefs with a critical objective eye.