Something in Common
If we resist our cultural training, we are likely to find enough common ground to carry forward God's mission in our world. The last in a series on our stance in culture.
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People of my generation will have heard the adage: “Don’t discuss politics or religion in polite society.” It wasn’t necessary to say that we shouldn’t discuss sex, that was considered obvious. I don’t know if that is a norm we observe anymore (we still have them, right?) - and I don’t know if we consider the society we have ‘polite’. At any rate, we still tend to avoid these discussions with people - but maybe we shouldn’t, maybe we should learn to have them. How can we learn to have them if we are always avoiding them? If we risked it and unexpectedly engaged with people on the other side of politics or culture, we might be surprised by what we find.
That is the conclusion of a just-published scholarly review - Misplaced Divides? Discussing Political Disagreement With Strangers Can Be Unexpectedly Positive in Psychological Science - a look at recent studies that analyzed the interactions of those who are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Quoting from the abstract …
Differences of opinion between people are common in everyday life, but discussing those differences openly in conversation may be unnecessarily rare. We report three experiments (N = 1,264 U.S.-based adults) demonstrating that people’s interest in discussing important but potentially divisive topics is guided by their expectations about how positively the conversation will unfold, leaving them more interested in having a conversation with someone who agrees versus disagrees with them. People’s expectations about their conversations, however, were systematically miscalibrated such that people underestimated how positive these conversations would be—especially in cases of disagreement.
Misplaced Divides? Discussing Political Disagreement With Strangers Can Be Unexpectedly Positive - Psychological Science - March 28, 2024
Our interest (or lack thereof) in having these conversations is guided by our (bad) expectations about how these conversations will turn out. So, they ‘may be unnecessarily rare.’ The people in these studies ‘systematically … underestimated how positive these conversations would be - especially in cases of disagreement.’
The abstract also quotes Dr. King approvingly -
I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other, and they don’t know each other because they don’t communicate with each other, and they don’t communicate with each other because they are separated from each other. And God grant that something will happen to open channels of communication. . . .
—Martin Luther King, An Address by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Lecture, Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa, October 15, 1962
That is a picture of America with respect to the racial divide in 1962, and it is a picture of America still, with respect to all sorts of additional cultural and political divides. And, the study finds, if we ever talk to one another, we may find that the reality is better than our expectations. Why? Because of something King believed and because of something I have been trying to say these last number of weeks and months (and, to some extent, ever since I started writing these little gems a couple of years ago) - we have more common ground than we think. Quoting from the article one last time, here is how they put it (emphasis mine) -
Miscalibrated expectations stemmed from underestimating the degree of common ground that would emerge in conversation and from failing to appreciate the power of social forces in conversation that create social connection. Misunderstanding the outcomes of conversation could lead people to avoid discussing disagreements more often, creating a misplaced barrier to learning, social connection, free inquiry, and free expression.
Misplaced Divides? Discussing Political Disagreement With Strangers Can Be Unexpectedly Positive - Psychological Science - March 28, 2024
We underestimate the degree of common ground that would emerge. Is there always common ground? I believe so - because we all bear the image of God and we all live in His reality, His story. There is much in that we cannot escape, however much we may want to separate from each other. And it is good we cannot escape it.
Over the past three editions of The Embassy, we have looked at what transformation from within is and how it can impact our culture, instead of our efforts to ‘change the world’. We have looked at how we can resist the impulse to draw ever shrinking circles for ourselves and instead take Two Steps Forward. And we have looked at a picture of our stance in culture - that of an Ambassador representing their home in another place. Armed with this belief that there is common ground to find, what might this look like, at least in part? How can we find that place from which we can connect and communicate? Because I am hoping to sketch a view of a Christian cultural stance, I have in mind an episode from the life of Paul in the culturally dissonant (to him) city of Athens found in Acts 17.
Paul and his companions were on one of his missionary journeys in the middle of the first century, establishing and visiting churches, mostly in present day Greece and Turkey.
Those who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.
Acts 17:15
Here, Paul is left in Athens for a number of days, waiting for others to join him. In this chapter, a significant and lengthy message and other activities of Paul are recorded. We don’t have the time or space to look at them in depth, but I want to consider the first crucial move in this new place - a tipping point between finding common ground with connection and communication on the one side and missing it with alienation and disconnection on the other.
While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.
Acts 17:16
Paul looked around him and he was greatly distressed. Some translations say he was deeply grieved. He saw these idols, representing not only a people disconnected from the true God, but a dishonoring of that true God. He was greatly distressed. Can you relate? Have you looked at the world, at the actions of others around you, at the lostness and dishonoring, and have you been greatly distressed in response? It is with this in view that we can run away from a chance at common ground - with all that is different so prominent, we, in our distress - miss our chance for common ground.
When Paul had his first real public audience in Athens, with the philosophers of the day as witness in the place with the Greek name Areopagus and that the Romans called Mars Hill, the center of philosophical thought in the ancient world - he took two steps forward toward common ground …
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: ‘People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. ... and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
Acts 17:22-23
In the message that follows, Paul describes this God, unknown to them, in terms they could understand and relate to - quoting their own poets and philosophers, indicating a sympathetic understanding of their culture … but it is the first move that is crucial, and that we often miss. Instead of speaking from his distress or pointing at all the things not in common, Paul looks at these Athenians and finds people seeking the divine, seeking something or someone outside of self to worship and to be devoted to. Paul might say the Athenians are mistaken in the particulars of their search for the divine, but the search for the divine is common ground. Most don’t search or don’t think there is anything to search for, not these Athenians, they, like Paul, believe there is something to be found. The Athenians even allow for a God they do not yet know - and Paul says you do not yet know the God I worship … let me tell you about Him. He uses the common ground they provide - because that is what common ground is - to expand it in a way they may not have been expecting.
Instead of holding the Athenians responsible for his distressed spirit - instead of objecting to the Chili to use a metaphor found in the first installment of this series - Paul doesn’t make it about his distress. Instead of pointing at all the disconnections, he finds a place of connection and, from there, represents his home kingdom to use a metaphor found in the third installment of this series. As a result, whatever their response (some believed, some sneered, some said ‘we want to hear you again’), they heard him. He had found a place where he could be genuinely understood with all the other obstacles cleared away. Leaving the only obstacle you can’t clear away, the message of the gospel - the obstacle that must be contended with.
If we get to a place - absent our ‘change the world’ ambition, stepping into their world, and finding a common place to stand - where we can be heard, where we can communicate truth with grace and care … that is all we can do. That is faithfulness to our message in this culture. If we can’t, it doesn’t much matter to them what we have to say.
Links
Misplaced Divides? Discussing Political Disagreement With Strangers Can Be Unexpectedly Positive - Psychological Journal - March 28, 2024
