As expected, after my blogpost on Chick-Fil-A, there are some people
who understand me better, some people who feel the same, some people who still
dislike me, and others who just completely misunderstand where I am coming
from. I think that's pretty much gonna
be the case for most of my life. While I
consider myself a fairly good communicator, I completely understand that each and
every one of us looks at the world through our own lens, colored by experience
and belief. That lens often has a way of
changing our viewpoint simply because of the nature of experience and belief. I feel like my goal is to do the best that I
can to allow my lens to be as objective as possible. Not that experience and belief don't shape
how I see, but I want to be able to be open to at the very least understand
where someone else is coming from.
My wife received a message from a friend who seemed curious and even
concerned with how we might perceive her had we known that she ate at
Chick-Fil-A on Wednesday. My heart sank
when my wife told me about it because I hate to be misunderstood and I felt
like that may have been the case. But
it's been stuck in my head ever since my wife shared it with me and I just keep
rolling it over in my head, wondering how it is that we got here.
My week seems to have been full of short and long conversations with people
who are ideologically different than me.
Someone questioned me the other day about some claimed differences
within our denomination that they did not understand. As I sat and listened to her wonder about
what the differences may be, I also wondered to myself how many conversations
had been entered into with others whose views differed. I don't say that as an accusation at all, in
fact, it's a two-way street that seems to have turned one-way. I'm not completely sure when the
"Two-Way Traffic" sign was removed and replaced with a "One
Way" sign, but it happened.
I don't mean two-way traffic in a non-absolute way but rather in a
conversational way. Conversations need
to be two-way streets, allowing both sides to travel along the path of
conversation in hopes that they might be able to understand each other a little
bit better by the end of the conversation.
I don't expect that the direction of traffic might change by the end of
the conversation, but I do expect a level of education to have been achieved as
both directions slow down long enough to explain to the other why they're going
the way that they are going.
When we enter into conversation to try to convince people, it seems
that we take an element of care, concern, and love out of the
conversation. When we enter into
conversation to understand, it seems that our defenses come down and we
actually seek to learn. Frankly, I'm
fairly tired of people who claim to be open-minded and yet when the sticks come
down, they show through actions and sometimes words that they are open-minded
to anything as long as it does not conflict with their own seemingly open-minded
ideas. I'm also tired of the idea of
taking a stand in polarizing ways.
Back to this whole Chick-Fil-A thing, I think it says something about
both sides that when one side stages an endorsement day of the company, the
other side decides to "one-up" the other by staging a different type
of endorsement day altogether. Is this
what it's come to, playground politics where I say, "I'll show you"
and then I do my best to make sure that I somehow go a little further than you
did. It kind of reminds me of the scene
in "A Christmas Story" when Ralphie and his friends are gathered
around the flagpole in the middle of winter.
They taunt and tease each other and the competition escalates to a
"Triple Dog Dare." It's as if
all that we want out of the situation, from both sides, is to "win,"
whatever that means.
I haven't hesitated in the past to verbalize my beliefs, but I do my
best to try and understand that everyone does not see things the way that I
do. I have a strong sense within me of
what's right and what's wrong, but I know that not everyone holds to those same
beliefs. I have found that it has been
way more effective for me to graciously converse with people about our
differences rather than simply tell them, "You're wrong and I'm
right," whether I say it like that or not.
When we come out with generalizing statements, regardless of which
"side" we claim to be on, there will inevitably be some who are not
defined by such statements who will take exception to the categorization. I'm fully aware that we're all guilty of this
but it needs to stop. If you are a
Christian who holds to the teaching of Scripture as I do, maybe instead of
toting signs and staging protests, you ought to get to know someone whose view
differs. Begin a conversation with them
and find out what they believe and why they believe it. If you enter the conversation because you
legitimately care, they will appreciate it and may even give you the
opportunity to explain what and why you believe what you believe.
Likewise, if you support a different view in which Scripture plays no
part, maybe you can find someone who breaks the generalizations that our media
loves to emphasize. Find someone who
holds a different view and who is willing to engage in a conversation with you,
both of you might learn something in the process.
While I've learned a lot over the years, I still know that I've got a
whole lot more to learn. One thing that
I do know is that amiable and intelligent conversations don't happen across
picket and protest lines, but they do happen across coffee tables. I might not be able to change all that, but I
can certainly change what I do in hopes that others might follow suit. At the very least, there will be a few of us
who will engage in some beneficial conversations, and who knows, we might just
learn something.
