We are just back from attending a conference with 500 other missionaries from around the world in which the plenary sessions speaker was encouraging us to be willing disagree with others. He challenged us to not hide our perspectives from others so that we just 'pretend' to not disagree. He explained how he, as a mission leader, is always encouraged when his members have healthy disagreement about issues and take the time to air their thoughts respectfully and be willing to listen and learn from each other and use disagreement for growth and better outcomes.
This reminded me of how easily in our modern western world and in the honour-shame dynamics of the majority world, we take disagreement to be the ultimate 'wrong-doing'.
Disagreement is not seen as equals debating a point with equal weight and opportunity, in order to increase understanding, wisdom and good outcomes. Instead disagreement is seen as elevating yourself and demeaning the other person - in other words a very honour-shame context.
The Jim Denison Report a few days ago stated (emphasis mine):
Mike Huckabee resigned last week from the CMA Foundation, an educational arm of the Country Music Association. The former Arkansas governor has long been a champion of putting the arts in schools, which is the mission of the Foundation.Why, then, was he forced to resign?One gay advocate's protest is an example of many others: "Huckabee speaks of the sort of things that would suggest my family is morally beneath his and uses language that has a profoundly negative impact upon young people all across this country. Not to mention how harmful and damaging his deep involvement with the NRA is. What a shameful choice."What about Mr. Huckabee's position on homosexuality was so objectionable to so many?He believes that marriage should be "uniquely between a man and a woman." And he supports the Federal Marriage Amendment, which "defines marriage as between one man and one woman."
'The Dying Art of Disagreement" - was the title of an article in the New York Times which was the text of a lecture delivered at the Lowy Institute Media Award dinner in Sydney, Australia, on Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. The award recognizes excellence in Australian foreign affairs journalism.
Although I disagree with his same-sex marriage position, I do agree with much of what the speaker says and his insightful observations including these comments:
….the arts of disagreement that are the best foundation of intelligent democratic life….
To say the words, "I agree" — whether it's agreeing to join an organization, or submit to a political authority, or subscribe to a religious faith — may be the basis of every community.
But to say, I disagree; I refuse; you're wrong; etiam si omnes — ego non— these are the words that define our individuality, give us our freedom, enjoin our tolerance, enlarge our perspectives, seize our attention, energize our progress, make our democracies real, and give hope and courage to oppressed people everywhere.
But he also noted that:
And the problem, as I see it, is that we're failing at the task.
Our world is full of mis-placed honour, and along with that comes a desire by people to have the honour that is meant for God alone.
It is only God who is not to be disagreed with. Only God is the standard of absolute truth. Human beings are not the dispensers of absolute truth and we should often be in disagreement with each other.
But when God is displaced then honour is mis-placed.
When God is displaced, we set ourselves and our own honour and respect as the highest goal, and we begin setting the definition of what it means to gives 'us' honour and respect.
We set ourselves up as our own 'gods'. We become our own standard of unquestionable truth. And thus we will not tolerate any disagreement with our opinions and beliefs. We interpret disagreement as a personal attack and a threat to our very being. Our sinful desires and pleasures dictate what we want in life, and we set our beliefs according to our desires, and then our beliefs become our truth, and our truth is not to be questioned.
If another person dares to question or disagree with us we claim disrespect as the ultimate 'wrong' being done.
Disrespecting me and mine in ways that are unacceptable to me and as defined by me, has become the plumbline of 'sin'.
It doesn't matter what 'culture' you come from, there are certain foundational elements that will emerge when honour is mis-placed.
Human beings and human cultures are not infallible, nor are they unchanging. They are fallen, flawed, finite, and in constant flux. And the individual human beings within collective community cultures - whether they are Western or Majority world - are actually notoriously fickle!
Only God is unchanging - fixed, firm and infallible. Only He is always right.
So when God is in His right place in our thinking, we recognise that human beings are not perfect, and are not always right, and do not have perfect or complete understanding of life, and are sinful in our perspective on life and our desires for life.
We therefore are humbly willing to admit that no human being knows everything, so every human being needs to hear others, seek to understand others and be tolerant of others' opinions that disagree with ours. We do this because our goal is not to change so we agree with every other human being, but for each human being to change to agree with God.
We live in an era where the word 'Tolerance' is King…. Except it has morphed into something detached from its true meaning.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, To be tolerant is to show "willingness to allow the existence of opinions or behaviour that one does not necessarily agree with."
To be tolerant does not mean we cannot express our disagreement or reasons for disagreement. Tolerance just means we accept that others may disagree and to honour them is to allow them to disagree with us, voice that disagreement and live according to their conscience in their disagreement.
The difference between a traditional African and current Western situation, is that the strong dominance of individualism in the West has meant that unlike Africa which still saw a need to come under the tribal authority figure for the harmony and peace of the tribe, the West is at a point of seeing no need to come under any authority except one's own individual authority. Instead of the African ancestors as corporate 'gods' of the community to which the tribal members are meant to submit, the Western individual wants to submit to no 'god' except himself.
This might seem like a problem that only effects those who have extreme views and a wrong understanding of tolerance.
But there is a subtle side to this that can affect us all, more than we realise, and is significant in the lives of those with a stronger honour-shame emphasis.
We can easily become angry when others disagree with us, argue with us or debate with us because we don't like to be wrong or feel attacked. To be blunt, we don't like our pride challenged. We take disagreement as a threat to our value, importance, dignity, significance, acceptance or status. In other words we can take someone's disagreement with us as their disrespect of us.
In African culture we might see this as the questioning of elders and teachers as not allowed. In a marriage we might see this as a wife's disagreement or question of her husband as not allowed and is viewed as disrepect. In the West we are seeing this as complete intolerance for any views to be expressed different from our own.
Can there be both disagreement and respect?
In a mis-placed honour-shame culture context whether that be in Africa or a Western marriage or a Western 'gender' debate, there is a fear of conflict and little to no room for disagreement because it is seen as a challenge to a person's honour, a threat to their acceptance and significance, an undermining of their respect, a risk to their sense of approval and a danger to their place, position and power. Such a person responds out of fear of that threat of dishonour, and like a threatened animal they attack back.
A person from a more 'guilt-law' based culture or background that welcomes rigorous debate as a means to refining and balancing and deepening one's perspectives, will be seen as contentious, argumentative, and intolerant, and even engaging in hate-speech. They may want to argue out the issue or topic but an honour-shame oriented person will see it as a personal attack. But society that does not engage in strong conversation with opposing views is a society of intellectual poverty. Yet this is where the West is heading, and fast.
We are in a messy place and a confused place in our Western mis-placed honour. We want to each have our own 'truth' and allow everyone else to have their 'truth'. Yet this means we will inevitably disagree with everyone else. There will be no supreme truth that will bring any true hope of a lasting and growing sense of unity. Yet on the other hand we vehmently shame and despise anyone who disagrees with our opinion. We are in fact encouraging what we won't allow!
Yet, when we acknowledge God as the only all-knowing one, there is plenty of room for us to disagree, while acknowledging that we are together striving to grow in unity and agreement with the One we should all be agreeing with.
It is in that 'space' to disagree that we are free to invent, innovate, research, discover, analyse, debate, and discuss. It is the space where we invent and build. It is the space that produced those minds who contributed so much to the world we know today…such as Plato, Einstein, etc. To discover the world was round meant disagreeing with those who thought it was flat. To invent an aeroplane meant disagreeing with all those who said it couldn't be done. We shut out opportunity to grow when we shut out disagreement.
As the New York Times article said "every great idea is really just a spectacular disagreement with some other great idea."
Judge Judith Schindler of 'Judge Judy' fame on TV, when speaking at the Oxford Union at Oxford University said:
So we know what hate speak is…..but when as a culture we start to define down further what hate-speak is- "well if i don't agree with that, its hate-speak", "if it marginalises a position that I believe in, that's hate speak", …….and universities are supposed to be the cradle of understanding, of free speech, of debate, and when you have incidents such as you had in Middlebery where the speaker was not a speaker who spoke hate-speak but he had a very conservative opionion and was invited by a professor, and wasn't allowed to speak and was actually physically attacked along with the professor, when they were trying to get out of the venue. Well, that's ridiculous. You don't want to live in a world where there is only one voice. ….... So you want both sides. If you don't have reasoned debate, you are a one sided fool.
Despite the road that modern Western society seems to be taking and much of traditional Africa has held dear, Scripture teaches there is not only plenty of room for disagreement, but there is a requirement for it.
If we are agreeing with everything and everyone around us, we are definitely not agreeing with God as we ought to be. To truly honour God requires times of disagreement with people. And to truly honour people requires times of disagreement with them. If we truly want the best for others we will not withhold an idea that could better their lives even if it disagrees with their prior held belief. Disagreement can also give another person the honour of further explaining their position so that you understand it better. Again as the New York Times article said:
In other words, to disagree well you must first understand well. You have to read deeply, listen carefully, watch closely. You need to grant your adversary moral respect; give him the intellectual benefit of doubt; have sympathy for his motives and participate empathically with his line of reasoning. And you need to allow for the possibility that you might yet be persuaded of what he has to say.
Because people are not God, and every person is finite,
and every Christian is growing in different ways from another Christian and none of us has perfect knowledge,
there is no escaping that we will disagree with each other,
and God expects us to disagree with others.
Jesus tells us that while he came as the good news of salvation, He would also be the means by which homes would be divided (Matthew 10:35) as some did not agree or follow his teaching. We have example in Scripture of Barnabas disagreeing with Paul over whether to take John Mark with them (Acts 15:36-41). We have Paul telling the Society leaders that he had to disagree with them as he must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29). We have Jesus calling a man, who wants to follow him but asks to go bury his father first, and Jesus says to 'let the dead bury the dead', leave his father and follow Jesus (Luke 9:60)- that was a big demonstration of disagreement with family and cultural expectations.
But how do we reconcile this with Scripture that tells us to 'honour our father and mother' and 'honour all men'? If Scripture tells us to honour everyone and yet tells us there will be times we will have to disagree, and even voice and act on that disagreement, how do we do both?
Well, we can be sure that if God commands it, it is possible.
It is possible, when we honour according to God's way of honour and disagree according to how God expects us to disagree. In God's system it is possible to honour others (in God's eyes) and disagree with them at the same time. We don't have to always be silent to be respectful.
And that is the key: we are accountable to God first and foremost. It is God who is to define the terms and direct our attitudes and actions. We are to do what is pleasing in His sight. It is Him who we are to first seek to agree with. As we each seek to agree with the Omniciient God, our disagreements are meant to enable us to see perspectives beyond our own and help others to see beyond their own vision, and the lies of Satan, in order to see more of the fuller picture God wants us to see.
J-O-Y
The old accrostic of JOY - Jesus, Others, and then Yourself last, is true. When we get that order confused or we remove the J altogether, that is where we create havoc and confusion and ultimately hinder our growth in knowledge of God's world and of God Himself and inhibit ourselves from being who God wants us to be.
PS Just the day after posting the above, links to two further articles came into my inbox on the very subject! I'd recommend you take a look at both of them.
The first is the excellent article "The Psychology of Progressive Hostility" by Matthew Blackwell (an Aussie at the University of Queensland)
...notice honour-shame community related concepts, phrases and words such as: risk of self-effacement, shunned, traitor, reputational disaster, intellectual humility etc.
The Second is also a great article, from Albert Mohler talking about Why Controversy is Sometimes Necessary
...and here's another worth looking at too, in the New York Times: The Shame Culture by David Brooks
The first is the excellent article "The Psychology of Progressive Hostility" by Matthew Blackwell (an Aussie at the University of Queensland)
...notice honour-shame community related concepts, phrases and words such as: risk of self-effacement, shunned, traitor, reputational disaster, intellectual humility etc.
The Second is also a great article, from Albert Mohler talking about Why Controversy is Sometimes Necessary
...and here's another worth looking at too, in the New York Times: The Shame Culture by David Brooks
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