Can We Talk?
I recently read a review of and ordered I NEVER THOUGHT OF IT THAT WAY: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times by Monica Guzman.
Guzman surveys how hard it is for people who disagree just to talk with each other in our high-emotion polarized times. We ‘other-ize’ people with whom we disagree – they are just not like us. We question their faith, patriotism, sense and sanity. Perhaps, a good place to start is to allow ourselves to try to understand how the ‘others’ came to see things the way they do.Anyhow, below is a piece I wrote a while back that came to my mind. It’s a bit long – does that surprise you from me? But it helped me to read it again. Maybe it will help you. If not, Doxology for Delete!
WHO IS YOUR NEWS SOURCE?
“The beginning of the good news (aka gospel) of Jesus Christ...”
Mark 1.1
ALWAYS A GUEST: SPEAKING OF FAITH FAR FROM HOME is a collection of sermons by noted writer, teacher, minister, teacher Barbara Brown Taylor. One message is “What is Your News Source?” It was delivered to a graduating seminary class in 2015.
Taylor tells of a good friend with whom she has spirited conversations over what is going on in the world, politics, and the issues of the day. She confesses it hard for them to hear, understand one another’s views. The friend’s main news source is Fox News, and Taylor’s tends to be NPR – National Public Radio...which her friend teases National Propaganda Radio.
Whatever our news source these days, at times their output appears more incite-full for emotional reaction, than insightful for good understanding. Sometimes it seems our only options to the issues of the day – environment, immigration, sexuality, Covid policies, voting rights, racial justice, government spending, on and on… – is to feel paralyzed or enraged.
Quickly, I want to be clear. I am an advocate for a free press. Whatever the imperfections of the press/ news media, we are served by their news reporting, and would be frightenly worse off without it. Though disconcerting, the adversary-ness of news sources can help reveal more aspects of the truth. But that takes integrity and maturity on our parts.
Also, not sure whether this is good or bad news, this sort of conflict is nothing new, though it does seem worse for us living in the now of it.
In Adam Goodheart’s (I love his name!) 1861: THE CIVIL WAR AWAKENING, he tells how rancor over racial issues increased because of the increased rapidness of news transmission made possible by the fast pace of newly installed 50,000 miles of telegraph lines that crisscrossed the cities and states of the country.
“That network spread much more quickly than the Internet would in more recent times...Action and reaction were now subject to a law of accelerated motion.” (P.29)
There was fear that the quickness would impede thoughtful processing and verification of the ‘news’. The horrible names and epithets thrown back and forth by rival newspapers and writers might even make our rough talkers now blush. Face Book ought to blip me if I quoted them.
Barbara Brown Taylor spoke to those new ministers, and by extension all faithful followers of Jesus, about their responsibility to process all the back and forth claims of media through the news source of scripture.
I remembered a famous statement by Karl Barth (d. 1968) one the ongoing most influential theologians of our time: “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from the Bible.” (Maybe that needs to be updated to your Bible app and your news app.)
That also reminds me of a statement quoted from noted mega church pastor Andy Stanley to the effect that Christians need to decide our politics by our faith and not our faith by our politics.
Many of us know the term gospel means in New Testament Greek, good news. What we may not know is that term gospel (euganglion) was usually used to report on the doings and decrees of Caesar.
In a way, for the message of Jesus to be called ‘gospel’ was a subtle but bold way to affirm there is a new source of news in the world to enable us to figure out what is authentically true and really matters.
Another way to say this is to affirm that Jesus is the interpretive key, the lens, through which we process and evaluate the happenings, matters, and ‘news’ sources of our lives and world.
It is a little more complicated than simply asking W.W.J.D. – What would Jesus do? – though that is not a bad start! This is more than cherry picking a verse here and there to back up our already held biases and pre-judgments.
I shudder at attempts from 1861 and before and continuing even now to find justification from Jesus and the Bible to keep various people in their place. Again, it is more nuanced than this, but a key to the best we know of Jesus and his joining with the prophets of the Hebrew Bible is to extend God’s including love for all people and caring stewardship of the earth.
I have mentioned before what I learned from the theologian Peter Hodgson in seminary at Vanderbilt. In this world, not to take a position is basically default to the status quo. His term is ‘critical partisanship’ – people of faith and integrity carefully take a position AND are as critical of their own side’s flaws as the other side’s. That can foster finding third ways.
My hunch is that many sitting in most UMC churches are people who have as their main news source one or the other of Barbara Brown Taylor and her friend. There will be people who have very different views on political leaders and issues, as well as the matters facing our churches just now.
Maybe more of us Jesus people can be better witnesses to how good people struggle with their strongly held differences with respect and not condemnation. For sure, we are not going to all join hands and sing Kum Ba Yah any time soon, and probably should not if that means ignoring the tough matters we face now. But...
I got a crown in-a that kingdom,
Ain't-a that good news!
I got a Savior in-a that kingdom,
Ain't-a that good news!
P.S. Though intriguing and challenging, Jesus made clear that kingdom reality of God is already breaking in here, not just waiting beyond here.
And that really is good news.