Disengaging From Debate

I had a great conversation with a friend today. She had been upset earlier that day, and she explained that she had just come from a tough encounter with another person at our campus green. The Free Thought Society on campus had written some rather harsh words regarding religion with chalk on the campus sidewalks today, which sparked my friend to start erasing some of it, which then sparked some other guy to confront her about said erasure.

Now, there are two things that should be known about this story before I go any further. First, The Free Thought Society is a group of people on campus whose chief goal outside of opposing religion I am unsure of. I don't want to make any assumptions on the group, but that is the only message I've heard (if a member reads this and believes I am representing them falsely, I invite you to correct me). My friend, on the other hand, is very passionate about her faith, and it is obvious all the time. You can see where there might be an issue.

The result of my friend's encounter was not an uncommon one. She was upset, and from her account of the situation, the guy was pretty abrasive about his distaste for religious beliefs. What was interesting was what my friend was still upset about later. She wasn't mad at the guy any more. She was mad at herself for being defensive rather than gracious.

When we debate people about our beliefs, we lose. I can't think of anyone I know who has been argued into believing in something they had been fundamentally opposed to. That could just be my experience, so if you are one of those people, please share your story with me. When we are argumentative about what the truth is, the truth takes second place to our egos. Everyone loses.

What about grace though? We talk about it all the time in an intellectual way, but do we practice grace as if it is a gift we have received? I do not, at least not as often as I would like. When I do experience those moments where I can be gracious enough to just love people and try to hear where they are coming from, I feel closer to who I was created to be. When we can stop trying to argue through a conflict of views and live in the tension for a moment, perhaps we can start seeing the wounds in one another's lives. Perhaps we can see how we can love one another. God wins, and we get the spoils.

I want to get better at encountering people. Like my friend, I want to be gracious instead of feeling right. My suspicion is that a good portion of the venom that Christians get comes from our failure to put loving them in front of winning an argument that isn't worth trying to win.

How do we become these people who love and do not hate, who embrace rather than debate? Shane Claiborne, who is part of the new ascetic movement and an incredible advocate for the oppressed, has shown at least one way. He experienced the pain and the struggles of those who he had judged as wrong, and it has made a difference far beyond his own life. I found this video while I was thinking about this post, and it seemed appropriate. Read, watch, and converse.



Peace.