Communications expert Tim Muehlhoff says in his book entitled I Beg to Differ: Navigating Difficult Conversations with Truth and Love, that all communication exists on two levels, the content level and the relational level.1 With this in mind, I entered into a conversation with my neighbor, Emily, wanting not just to garner information from her about her religious beliefs, but to develop a stronger connection with her.2 This could only come about by my listening carefully to what she said, wanting first to understand her and second to evaluate the content of our discussion.3 Ultimately, I wanted to be able to see through her eyes and affirm the importance of both her and our conversation while following Muehlhoff’s communication strategy to determine what she believes and why she believes it.4 5 6 In the process, I looked for common ground as well as points of difference to be discussed in the evaluation stage of the strategy.
Given that the “foundational cause of interpersonal conflict (is) the inability to anticipate how one’s words would affect a conversation,” feedforward came into play in my conversation with Emily.7 Feedforward is “the process of anticipating the effects of communication and adapting to these anticipated effects in advance of actually communicating with others.”8 This means we “need to have an idea of a person’s experiences, beliefs, values and core convictions before we engage him in conversation.”9 Because I have spoken to Emily about the gospel on other occasions, I had some idea of how she might reply to my questions. I knew that she resented people who tried to convince her of their views, even passively. A mutual friend used to give her devotionals and uplifting material — all Christ-centered — and this made Emily angry as she thought this woman was trying to convert her. At the very mention of Jesus and the idea that he was anything more than a good man, she sets her jaw, purses her lips and squints her eyes in displeasure. She hates conflict, especially over religious issues. Knowing all of this helped me to navigate our discussion much as a ship might navigate a rocky shoal — with great caution.
However, feedforward, for all its helpfulness, can also be a pitfall because “one difficulty with having recurring conversations with the same individual is that we start to think we know everything that person is about to say.”10 I knew I could not prejudge Emily, but should allow the conversation to take us into new territory — and it did.
Our conversation was pleasant, friendly and calm on both our parts. I explained my desire to become a better listener and told her about Muehlhoff’s book. She shared the fact that she had read Active Listening by Carl R. Rogers and Richard Evans Fanson and had tried to follow its principles to improve her own listening skills. She appreciated my goal and said she was glad to be part of the process.
Muehlhoff notes that “listening is often laborious due to the complexity of people’s messages.”11 This is true of Emily whose thought processes are often convoluted. Past conversations with her certainly helped me sort things out. I kept this proverb in mind: “The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out” (Prov. 20:5 NIV). In drawing out Emily’s purposes, I ended up with four key elements in her worldview.
First of all, Emily believes that all religions and belief systems are valid because they “all have a seed of truth in them,” and that they differ because, as she puts it, “people have different traditions, different lives, different moms and dads. It really became clear to me when I read native stuff. They were so open, talking about stories and myths. Everybody has stories passed down.” She explains further, saying, “I came to understand that why we believe what we do is based on how we were brought up. You can’t be wrong with how you’re brought up. You can’t be wrong because you lived it.”
Second, she believes that no one should try to convince other people that their beliefs are the only right ones and that arguing about them is wrong. As she put it, “I see people with God as their thing who seem angry. They fight about him. That’s not God. God is love.” Later in our conversation, she noted, “I hate fighting and conflict.” This is one of the reasons she dislikes Christians as she resents them trying to convert her and she sees them fighting about their beliefs. She concludes that “we have to just rely on ourselves, make decisions that feel right to us (and not) let other people tell (us) what to do. We should be free.”
Third, she does not believe Jesus came to earth as God Incarnate, saying that he was only a man who she describes as “a prophet” and “a wonderful and amazing person, a man of faith.”
Fourth, she believes that we live in bodies, but have spirits. She is uncertain about the reality of an afterlife, believes that our spirits may go on, but doesn’t know how or where. She notes that, when it comes to eternity, love is eternal as it goes on after we are gone, supposedly in our loved ones and the people whose lives we have touched.
The key to understanding why Emily holds these beliefs rests with her family and her childhood. This is not surprising since “family relations are considered to be the earliest and most enduring influences on how we view ourselves and the world around us.”12 She describes her mother as Greek Orthodox. While the woman didn’t go to church because of the language barrier (she spoke only Russian) and a feeling of disconnectedness from neighbors, she did read her Bible and tried to impart her beliefs to Emily. Emily remembers with fondness the picture of Jesus holding a lamb that her mother gave to her as a child.
Her father, however, was an atheist. Emily said he read all the time as he tried to “make sense of this crazy world.” She called him “a questioner.” She stated that her parents argued about their beliefs, saying, “My father would call my mother stupid for reading the Bible while she would call him stupid for reading the things he read.” These arguments frightened Emily. She describes hiding around the corner or under the table, listening to her parents fight.
Emily has described herself many times to me as a sensitive child who often took on her mother’s pain. Her mother, having been damaged by life under Joseph Stalin in the Ukraine and life under the Nazis in the Second World War, had numerous nervous breakdowns. A poetic moment, that moment when we can see into someone’s soul, occurred when Emily noted that her mother had only one photo of her family, a postage-stamp-sized picture of her father.13 At that point, she started to cry. She didn’t have to say anything more. She was feeling her mother’s pain and grief at all that had been lost to her.
Muehlhoff says we need to determine why a person has embraced her particular convictions and draw out the reasons why she has constructed her view of the world.14 He notes that “key relationships provide a context for understanding a person.”15 Emily’s revelations about her parents were new to me and they helped me to understand why she believes what she does. I think that, in a way, Emily is still that little girl hiding under the table as her parents argued about God, the Bible, and spiritual issues. I think this is at the root of her belief that everybody should believe what they want, that they shouldn’t argue about it, that nobody should try to convince others that their particular beliefs are right, that there is an element of truth in everyone’s beliefs and that’s enough. We should be satisfied with that.
In terms of the values she received from her parents, they contained mixed messages — that God is real and important versus God does not exist, and it’s foolish to believe he does. How can you reconcile these two polar opposites? I think Emily has done so by making them both right. On the one hand, Emily honors her mother with her belief in God’s existence. On the other, she honors her father by questioning everything and reading voraciously.
Interestingly, many of the authors Emily has read are Christians, including Henri Nouwen and Peter and Catherine Marshall. She said that Jean Vanier of L’Arche, an international federation of communities spread over 37 countries with developmental disabilities and those who assist them, taught her about compassion, something she said she had been lacking.
Muehlhoffer quotes communications expert Tim Downs when saying that “a wise communicator builds agreements, not arguments.”16 That means looking for what’s right, not just what’s wrong in a discussion. In fact, “a key part of discernment is being willing to affirm the parts of a person’s perspective that are true.”17 That means finding common ground. Muehlhoffer defines common ground as “a core package of values and rights we can affirm together while we can continue to disagree on some fundamental understanding of the ultimate nature of things.”18
I found several areas of agreement. First and foremost, Emily and I both recognize the reality of God, that He is spirit and that He is love. Secondly, we acknowledge that we exist as a body with a spirit. Thirdly, we agree that there is an element of truth in the many religions and belief systems in this world. Fourthly, we see eye to eye on the importance of story, the love people have for stories, and how they speak to us and help us sort out life. Lastly, we agree on the importance of being a good listener.
I questioned Emily further on the importance of story because we both value story so greatly. I was interested in learning what she thinks of Christ’s parables. She asked me to choose one. I chose The Prodigal Son, giving just a short synopsis of it to refresh her memory. She then shared a story of how that parable influenced her with regard to her own sons, describing how she had been spending so much time on the eldest one that she realized she had been neglecting the youngest. She said that the story of the Prodigal Son came to her mind and that is what motivated her to spend more time with the younger boy.
Emily has told me on more than one occasion that she doesn’t find the Bible interesting or much help in life. Therefore, I think the value of this aspect of our conversation rests in the fact that she found something in Scripture that was indeed a blessing. Perhaps it will encourage her to get into the parables — at least, that’s what I’m praying.
When it came to differences, I saw several areas that I could potentially address. First of all, there was the issue of absolute truth. Emily talked about people’s love of stories, saying, “there are stories about other people like Jesus, usually men, but some women, people of faith. We don’t need any more information than that. I don’t have time to seek out the absolute truth.” Yet, in the next breath, she talked about not wanting to have blind faith, but doing the work necessary to make sure one’s faith is warranted (my words, not hers). I see a contradiction in these statements.
Secondly, she says that people do not have the right to try to make others believe what they believe and stated that she did not try to make others agree with her beliefs. And yet, when it gets right down to it, if she truly believes she’s correct, why isn’t she sharing her information and asking others to get on board? She relativizes truth, thereby upholding the untenable position that all worldviews, religions and beliefs are equally valid. However, they often contradict each other and, therefore, all of them could not be right.
Lastly, Emily criticized Christians who said they had the facts, saying, “they’re lying; they don’t have facts.” She dismissed the Bible because it had been written so long ago, implying it had been altered down through the years and, therefore, could not be trusted.
In considering these three categories, feedforward came into play. I dismissed the first two as I did not want to make it seem that I was criticizing her thinking ability. Emily talked about Christians making her feel inferior because she isn’t a Christian (in fact, she thanked me for not acting like I’m superior to her because of my beliefs to which I replied, “That’s because I’m not.”) Knowing her for years, I have realized that Emily can be touchy, with a tendency to take things the wrong way, as a personal affront, when she shouldn’t do so. Therefore, I decided to discuss the reliability of the Bible because it would not reflect on her personally in any way.
I explained that the Bible is rooted in history and that archaeology has confirmed so many of the people, places, and events recorded in it. I noted that no other religion has a holy book that could do the same, citing as an example, the Latter Day Saints and their Book of Mormon. They claim it is a historical record, but its historicity has been debunked. I also referred to the discoveries about King David as an example of archaeology’s confirmation of his existence. Then I talked about the Dead Sea Scrolls and, in particular, the discovery of the Book of Isaiah and how the differences between it and the book we have in our current Bibles are few and insignificant. The Bible has indeed been preserved down through the years.
I asked if that made any difference to her beliefs about the Bible and she said, no, that she did not have the faith in history that I did. A distrust of historical accounts is, of course, a common postmodern view and it did not surprise me. I thought of Christian apologist Greg Koukl who, in his book Tactics, suggests that sometimes conversations with others is all about leaving a pebble in their shoes, that is, a bit of information that niggles away at them, causing them to ponder on our conversation. I hope that I left just that kind of pebble with Emily.
Ultimately, whether the conversation was effective or not depends on how we are defining “effectiveness.” If it means changing someone’s mind and bringing them to Christ, then, no, the conversation was not effective. But if we return to my initial goals for the conversation, I think that I can indeed say it was a success.
For one thing, I wanted to see through Emily’s eyes and develop empathy for her, empathy being, as Muehlhoff put it, “ the pinnacle of listening.”19 I asked myself, what if I were in her position, with parents I loved dearly arguing about something of such import in life? I could see why she developed her pluralist view of the world in which everybody had a right to believe what they want if it is meaningful to them. While I could not condone her perspective, I came to take her seriously whereas, in the past, I did not understand how she could hold such an illogical stance.
I also wanted to affirm the importance of Emily and our conversation. That happened simply by allowing her to tell her story. As Muehlhoff writes, “storytelling is a means of healing — the acts of story, both storytelling and story listening — of telling one’s story, of listening to another person’s story, or another person listening to our own — are fundamental to our humanity and sense of well-being.”20 This means that “one of the most important ways we can show love to another is to take the time to listen and unearth his or her stories.”21 Furthermore, “to deem listening unnecessary is to communicate that the other person is inferior and that his or her perspective does not matter.”22
The day after our conversation, Emily said to me, “You know, my ex-husband used to say to me all the time, ‘Nobody cares what you think.’” She paused and then added, “Thank you for caring what I think.”
That blew me away. She had told me that her ex-husband belittled her, but she had never given me any specifics. It made me so glad that our conversation had affirmed her importance and the fact that her beliefs are worth hearing. That, to me, represents the greatest success of the enterprise.
Notes:
1 Tim Muehlhoff, I Beg To Differ: Navigating Difficult Conversations With Truth And Love (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 23, Digital Edition.
2 I have changed her name for the sake of privacy.
3 Ibid., 94.
4 Ibid., 96.
5 Ibid., 86.
6 Ibid., 99.
7 Ibid., 30.
8 Ibid., 31.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., 89.
11 Ibid., 91.
12 Ibid., 105.
13 Ibid., 98.
14 Ibid., 103.
15 Ibid., 105.
16 Ibid., 121.
17 Ibid., 120.
18 Ibid., 124.
19 Ibid., 113.
20 Ibid., 86.
21 Ibid., 87.
22 Ibid., 88.
