Let's Talk!
A ONE Church Devotional on Finding Each Other's Humanity
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created humankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them. (Genesis 1.26-27)
O Divine Master, grant that I might seek…
not so much to be understood as to understand. (St. Francis’s Prayer)
I am very excited about an upcoming event I get to join in New Canaan, Connecticut. The Congregational Church in that fair hamlet was my first stop on ministry’s way, when I left academic circles to put my feet on the ground nearer the fray. It is a historic church with a vibrant congregation, and its two lead ministers, Chapin Garner and Marianna Kilbride, are visionary leaders. On May 16, CCNC’s leaders will join other clergy and town leaders to host what I call a Life Swap. It will be a chance for people who think and vote differently from one another actually to know each other better — and, heaven help us, we need help doing that!
The classic cliche between two marital partners whose relationship has gone stale is, “We just don’t talk to one another anymore.” It shows up in comedies and dramas in different forms, but it shows up in life often. And when communication wanes, relationships quickly grow strained.
This widely-acknowledged dynamic is true of societies as well. When communication between different parties stops, when groups or tribes become increasingly insulated from one another, a whole lot of bad things start happening. First, we lose track of who the other is. I’ve shared before the sad truth about stereotypes: the thrive in a communications vacuum. Here’s a Pew Research Center chart from 2022 that chronicles just how negative picture of one another this distance has inclined us to paint.
Around 70% of us imagine our political opposite is more immoral, dishonest, and closed-minded than most people, and a full half the population pictures our opposites as unintelligent. So the verdict is in: the reason we disagree is that those people are immoral and stupid. We also imagine people that more of the people from the other side of the aisle are politically extreme (55%) than they actually are (30%).
Our views are distorted by the combined forces of our social distance and the news, social media, and other feeds that we choose to use. The result is disastrous. We hate each other before we’ve ever met.
The solution to this is actually meeting one another, and that’s what we’ll be doing in New Canaan on May 16. People will be paired with political unlikes and asked to listen to their life story for a full half hour — what they believe and what life experiences have inclined them toward those tenets. Then, after each partner has listened intently to the other and taken notes, they’ll tell each other’s story in the first person — a practice that can hardly help but promote empathy.
In a way, this event is motivated by Genesis 1.26-27. For three different world religions, the absolute value and sheer dignity of each human being is established by the fact that God made every one of us in God’s own image. Surely this dignity makes each person worth at least a good half hour’s listen. Hopefully that’s what a room full of New Canaanites will rediscover together in a couple weeks.
I’ll let you know how it goes. For now, have a terrific Tuesday!
Prayer — Creator God, you somehow manage to love everyone you create infinitely. Teach us how to do that too, in Jesus. Amen.