How Liberal and Conservative Christians Can Dialogue
by Rev. Karen Fitz La Barge, 10/15/2020
It is no secret that political disagreements often break apart our relationships, families and churches. Christians are human and our passionately held beliefs can boil over with emotions that can easily crush our attempts to love our neighbors with self-sacrificial love. Is there any way that Christians with very different beliefs can still dialogue with each other?
Eph. 4:29-32 has some advice for us: Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
The first step in being able to dialogue is to forgive other person for having a belief that you disagree with. Truly forgive them and try to have some empathy as to how they came to such an understanding of the world. The goal is for you to be able to set aside your rage and anger at their having an opposing world view. This is a substitute for your slanderous thinking that the others are stupid or brainwashed or gullible. Any put downs, threats and name calling should not be in your mind and certainly should never come out of your mouth.
The next step is to open your own mind and try to follow the logic of the other person’s reasoning. If you believed the same facts that they do would you come to the same conclusions? If not, then perhaps you can kindly and gently point out where their logic falls apart and help them come to a more reasoned out position. There are good arguments and there are poor arguments based on reason alone. Try to talk about the strength and weakness of their position based on logic and not about their belief in a particular fact being true or false.
While logical reasoning and discourse about the strength of a particular argument can be illuminating and create a good dialogue, often it is not helpful when people are arguing with completely different sets of facts. This is where much of our discourse has broken down in recent years. The only way forward from this is to begin again by starting with the basic facts that both sides can agree on, and then agreeing on the sources that you both will accept as truth. This, and an honest commitment to love and to care for each other’s well being will go a long way towards building up a community where trust and honest dialogue about ideas can again give glory to God. Amen
