Talking past...

I have a college friend with whom I’ve become somewhat recently reconnected via Facebook. In fact, there are a bunch of us from that same circle of friends who regularly share old memories and family updates. We’re even planning a reunion picnic for this coming summer. Good stuff.

If only it could stay at the level of old memories and family updates.

This friend posted something within the last week of a political nature related to the on-going tussle between the Obama administration and the US Catholic bishops about the forced provision of contraceptives by Catholic institutions. My friend had some very definite views about this issue related to gender and power inequities and the need for justice. Because even when it’s good for me I can’t always keep my mouth shut, I responded with a question about the constitutionality of the matter. And suddenly we seem to be unable to speak about this issue. Our entry points on the conversation and our assumptions about what’s going on here are so very different that we end up talking past each other no matter what we say. Guess we’ll have to sort it out over a beer at that upcoming picnic. Or maybe we’ll just agree to disagree. Hopefully we don’t end up at the point of “un-friending” one another.

Does is seem that an awful lot of what passes for theological and ecclesial conversation in the church these days falls into this same pit? The inability to speak clearly, civilly and rationally with fellow Christians of differing persuasions is about the worst thing we’ve borrowed from the larger culture since Constantine and the empire.

Really…I don’t expect to agree with everyone or to have everyone agree with me. I don’t even agree with everything the folks I agree with have to say about things we agree on. (Sorry. You may have to read that sentence twice.) Life and faith are much too nuanced to fit into a single-issue argument about which we all have to take sides. There is something greater at stake here: the on-going mission of the church to be Christ to a world that needs Christ more desperately than it knows. But if we insist on (and persist in) lobbing rocks at each other rather than the devil, Christ doesn’t get heard, at least not by us…and the world turns away…and we shrink into the irrelevance that we have made for ourselves.

So if I ask you a question that seems challenging, please don’t assume that I’m simply being a difficult, sarcastic wiseass. Maybe I just want an answer…from you, from your perspective…in order to better understand. I promise to return the favor. And perhaps, if we really work at this, we can get back to the business to which we are called.