Now that I'm in my second half century of life, I freely admit that there aren't a lot of interpersonal disagreements, misunderstandings and hurt feelings that can actually be solved by the correct application of logic. Heaven knows, I've tried. I could make myself dizzy and old(er) counting the number of arguments, disagreements and debates that I've won hands down on point of logic, only to be dismissed on grounds that they're uncaring, irrelevant or don't take into account the feelings of...everyone, everywhere that ever lived. There might have even been a little upset here and there as a result of my being right on point of logic.
It's useful to have guidelines for disagreeing and for stating and rebutting a point. In real life though, rules for this kind of encounter vanish around the time that shoulders, eyebrows and voices raise. That's unfortunate because I think if we could follow the rules just a bit, we could have more hope of finding the ground that's common rather than the ground that's higher. However, reality is pretty real and we have to negotiate the distance between respective positions and perspectives, yielding enough to let someone else pick their way around our tender places as well.
The normal flow of the disagreement is to either withdraw or to establish some form of moral equivalence. Moral equivalence is the form of argument that says something that sounds like, "Oh sure, my t-shirt might be out but YOUR socks don't match!" Of course, there's even the more basic form learned originally on the playground, "You're a bigger one!"
Of course, none of that has anything to do with the point at hand and only serves to reinforce the presumably broken status quo. It's not so much agreeing to disagree as it is being disagreeable about disagreeing on the matter of your disagreement.
This leads to a very knotty question: How do you fight a war with virtually no agreed upon rules of engagement, act equitably and bring the matter to not just truce but finally peace? There's really only one way out of this feedback loop of infinite angst and sadly it's the most difficult behavior found in modern discourse in 21st century culture. You have to listen.
Listening is not achieved by sitting still with your mouth mostly closed while you hear someone talk. Neither is it achieved by simply taking turns in a conversation. You actually have to entertain the possibility that the person on the other side of the argument might be at least partially right...or even completely right.
To achieve listening you have to let yourself be a bit vulnerable. You have to start out by surrendering, even if just a little bit. You don't necessarily surrender completely, unless maybe you've been obviously and egregiously wrong.
The idea has been found on the battlefield for at least 2000 years, in the form of the white flag. I think it's fascinating that the white flag is used as both a sign of surrender as well as a sign of temporary truce. Even though the nature of the exchange may range anywhere from negotiating mutual interest to dictating terms to abject surrender, it's accomplished under a flag of peace. The greater issues of the war might still remain but for the moment at least we can stand on our common ground.
Sadly, passing with the idea of structured and perhaps civilized disagreement are other good things. These include mutual respect, shared value and even grace. Wars, battles and arguments are now unconditional. Treaties are ignored when it is convenient to do so and outrage at "the other side's" treaty transgression is genuine and deep seated. Abandoning civility in the name of "winning" has become both a social and personal norm. "Feelings" at both the societal and personal levels have been elevated to the level of deity. How we feel now trumps how we think, objective reality and even the rule of law.
I don't have a great solution to this societal avalanche of self-righteous feeling. I have only one suggestion. Make your next step to be in the direction of reconciliation. It might leave you vulnerable or even hurt straight off but sometimes surrender is a step in the right direction. And maybe while you're making that next step, just listen a little.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Sunday, July 1, 2012
The Promise of Something Old and Something New
Our daughter Sarah was married to our new son Brandon about a week ago. From the guests to the community that helped pull it off to the weather to the bride and groom, it was a story book day. It will take me a long time to process the beauty of it.
As father of the bride preparing for the wedding, I found I had duties. I knew I had to give our daughter away of course. (Mostly I knew that factoid from movies and T.V.) I also was encouraged to prepare a toast.
From the way this was presented to me it seemed like I could probably wiggle out of this without too much fuss. I decided that if I had something to say I'd say it. Otherwise, I planned to just stand around and stare at the tops of my new, black, pretty awesome DC basketball shoes.
As happens occasionally, I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I had something to say. I knew this because I was so overcome with the beauty of what I'd heard and seen in moments between sleeping and waking that I was sobbing uncontrollably, almost convulsing. Over the last several years I've found that there are things that are so beautiful that no measured human response is possible. When you encounter such things, they are so unique and outside the boundaries of daily activity you may not see them for what they are. However, when you start to recognize them and what lies behind them, you tend to explode emotionally.
I was struck by the fact that Sarah and Brandon were going to make promises to each other in the presence of God and community. The great good intention of those promises can only be fulfilled by the passing of time and circumstance. And of course this place we live in is pretty broken and time and circumstance can be rough. From their wedding vows it was clear that the intent was that the joy of the moment of promise would be fulfilled over time, in love.
This is pretty consistent with most weddings I've been to. In the middle of the night though, just before I went over my emotional cliff a question hit me: That's where the promise is going but where did it come from? The first thing that occurred to me was that it descended in part from a nearly identical promise that Christy and I had made to each other and work to fulfill every day. Obviously though, that was just a link in a chain of promises that stretches back before time and will exist until there are no longer people on earth. And that I think was the point at which I started to lose it.
The marriage promises we make to each other are links forged into a chain of time created in time before time and redeemed two thousand years ago. This I think is the greatest point made by the inclusion of Christ's genealogy in the Bible. The chain described there of the gracious and the loving, the rapists and the whores, the kings and barbarians are all given to us as a family portrait of the King and Redeemer of man. It is a portrait that stretches across millennia back to the origin of man in time. It teaches us that even in the most broken of families the potential for redemption and love is staggering beyond imagination.
There's a scene in Genesis (3:21) that describes God making Adam and Eve's first clothes. I've heard a couple people over the years comment on this. One imagined God sitting on rock. As he drew the needle and cut the skin He saw the future as a great now. In that now, he saw the love of creation, mercy and redemption but he also saw the monstrous cost to both himself and to his children. He saw a road of infinite promise, faith, persistence and love set against constant struggle, betrayal and lies. I imagine a sigh escaping as thread joins skin to skin.
He would remind generation after generation of this great reality through stories in the form of lives and parables lived out and retold over thousands of years.
And he'd give us a vignette that would be our entry point into time, our desperate pursuit and our life's mission. It would be the thing through which he would deliver generation after generation of souls already spoken. That vignette is marriage, both it's promise and it's realization. It is marriage in it's love and passion but also marriage in it's struggle, effort and even betrayal. It is the journey of becoming and redemption. It is the journey to becoming one.
After the promises, the road stretches out before us. Each step offers a choice of promise or betrayal; each step is a choice. Persistence on that road offers one certain promise that supports all other possibility. It offers the hope of ever deepening and expanding love that extends to the point of two becoming one.
As father of the bride preparing for the wedding, I found I had duties. I knew I had to give our daughter away of course. (Mostly I knew that factoid from movies and T.V.) I also was encouraged to prepare a toast.
From the way this was presented to me it seemed like I could probably wiggle out of this without too much fuss. I decided that if I had something to say I'd say it. Otherwise, I planned to just stand around and stare at the tops of my new, black, pretty awesome DC basketball shoes.
As happens occasionally, I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I had something to say. I knew this because I was so overcome with the beauty of what I'd heard and seen in moments between sleeping and waking that I was sobbing uncontrollably, almost convulsing. Over the last several years I've found that there are things that are so beautiful that no measured human response is possible. When you encounter such things, they are so unique and outside the boundaries of daily activity you may not see them for what they are. However, when you start to recognize them and what lies behind them, you tend to explode emotionally.
I was struck by the fact that Sarah and Brandon were going to make promises to each other in the presence of God and community. The great good intention of those promises can only be fulfilled by the passing of time and circumstance. And of course this place we live in is pretty broken and time and circumstance can be rough. From their wedding vows it was clear that the intent was that the joy of the moment of promise would be fulfilled over time, in love.
This is pretty consistent with most weddings I've been to. In the middle of the night though, just before I went over my emotional cliff a question hit me: That's where the promise is going but where did it come from? The first thing that occurred to me was that it descended in part from a nearly identical promise that Christy and I had made to each other and work to fulfill every day. Obviously though, that was just a link in a chain of promises that stretches back before time and will exist until there are no longer people on earth. And that I think was the point at which I started to lose it.
The marriage promises we make to each other are links forged into a chain of time created in time before time and redeemed two thousand years ago. This I think is the greatest point made by the inclusion of Christ's genealogy in the Bible. The chain described there of the gracious and the loving, the rapists and the whores, the kings and barbarians are all given to us as a family portrait of the King and Redeemer of man. It is a portrait that stretches across millennia back to the origin of man in time. It teaches us that even in the most broken of families the potential for redemption and love is staggering beyond imagination.
There's a scene in Genesis (3:21) that describes God making Adam and Eve's first clothes. I've heard a couple people over the years comment on this. One imagined God sitting on rock. As he drew the needle and cut the skin He saw the future as a great now. In that now, he saw the love of creation, mercy and redemption but he also saw the monstrous cost to both himself and to his children. He saw a road of infinite promise, faith, persistence and love set against constant struggle, betrayal and lies. I imagine a sigh escaping as thread joins skin to skin.
He would remind generation after generation of this great reality through stories in the form of lives and parables lived out and retold over thousands of years.
And he'd give us a vignette that would be our entry point into time, our desperate pursuit and our life's mission. It would be the thing through which he would deliver generation after generation of souls already spoken. That vignette is marriage, both it's promise and it's realization. It is marriage in it's love and passion but also marriage in it's struggle, effort and even betrayal. It is the journey of becoming and redemption. It is the journey to becoming one.
After the promises, the road stretches out before us. Each step offers a choice of promise or betrayal; each step is a choice. Persistence on that road offers one certain promise that supports all other possibility. It offers the hope of ever deepening and expanding love that extends to the point of two becoming one.
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