Minding Your Own Business: Why Our Opposition to Others Says So Much about Us

So many. So angry. So often.

The people who need this most are least likely to read it. I accept that. Sadly. But it may be that you have some influence with them. If so, then that makes two (or more) of us trying to replace diatribe with dialogue. In fact, though, “diatribe” is too kind a word. Defined by Oxford Living Dictionaries, a diatribe is “a forceful and bitter verbal attack against someone or something.”

Enmity’s litany has become liturgy on social media. It is not just that hateful name-calling is so endlessly repeated. There is a predictable order of claims and counterclaims following every new development. And periodically, just as with liturgical churches’ adherence to the three-year rotation of the lectionary, we complete a cycle of all the cardinal doctrines on each side, only to begin again.

The attacks are forceful and bitter. But are these forceful and bitter verbal attacks truly against someone or something? This is where I think the Oxford definition fails us. Because the attacks are against hollow shells, mere emblems of underlying hatred. In logic class they call it “the straw-man argument” when we misrepresent another’s position in order to more easily defeat it. The “ad-hominem” argument goes a step further and misrepresents other human persons as being so inherently wrong that any statement they present must be impossible to support.

As in the two prior posts in this series, I advise us to engage one another in dialogue, and determine to overcome the misunderstandings, and certain the misrepresentations. Before I tell you why I choose to pursue these dialogues, let me offer the hope I see for a remedy.

Though the Oxford definition is inadequate to describe the full extent of these hateful exchanges, it is also where I believe we may find the remedy. We readily offer diatribe against either persons for holding impossible positions on the issues (at least the way our “straw-man” misrepresents them), or against issues as being impossible to support because of those affiliated with them (at least the way our “ad-hominem” attacks choose to willfully misunderstand them).  The remedy I recommend is a renewed pursuit of relationships, indeed fellowship. Not just within the limitations of Church fellowship, but on the basis of solidarity among all human persons as created to bear the image and likeness of one God eternally existing in three Persons. (See previous posts in this series for some context.)

What the Bible teaches about fellowship is helpful to acknowledge here. True fellowship cannot help but be authentic, transparent, and vulnerable. To be authentic, I believe, means that if I say it, it should be true. To be transparent means that if it is true, I should say it. And that clearly leaves me vulnerable, since many will disparage me for the positions I hold, and attack the positions themselves merely because I am the one holding them.

Why do it, then? I choose to pursue these dialogues, primarily because of the role to which Christians are called as ambassadors. We are supposed to be representing the nature and character of Jesus Christ in a culture where He is often both misunderstood and misrepresented. I am deeply troubled by both those misunderstandings and the misrepresentations. I am even more troubled by the fact that I recognize both those misunderstandings and misrepresentations in both groups: those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, and those who do not. Worse, I see those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ willfully misrepresenting others’ positions, which suggests strongly that these “Christians” patently misunderstand the Lord they claim to serve.

And so, a secondary reason I pursue these dialogues so vigorously is this: so many others who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ are so deeply engaged in such vehement diatribe as to discourage mere contact with Christians. This means that those who may actually seek understanding and a representation of Jesus Christ are less likely to attend where such “followers” are more likely to gather (a lot of churches, mostly). As a result, all of us are effectively being excluded from environments in which the kind of fellowship I have described is most likely to occur.

So, in case I have not been clear, I will continue to pursue dialogue, even with those who continue to propagate diatribe. And when you ask, as you likely will, “Why are you sticking your nose into my business?” I will direct you to these three posts.