The Dialogue Venture

Archive for the ‘Dialogue and Spirituality’ Category

Humble. Humbled. Humility. The words don’t even sound pretty. They’ve come to denote some very unpleasant feelings.

I am convinced that they hold the key to dialogue.

Few words generate greater misunderstanding than humility. In the minds of many, it signifies humiliation, self-denigration, low self-esteem. Even the dictionary enshrines such definitions: Google humble and definition and see what you get. Eating humble pie is something no one wants to do. Being of humble means is something no one wants to be.

But there’s a better way to think about humility, and it can release all kinds of potential within us. Rightly understood, humility is complete clarity about our individual selves and our place in the universe. As the Holy Cross Associates’ Rule puts it, “Humility is not self-denigration; it is honest appraisal. We have gifts and deficiencies, as does everyone else.”

So what does this have to do with dialogue? To find the answer, let’s think about “our individual selves and our place in the universe.” I reduce this to two basic claims: 

1. I’m only one person.
2. I am one person.

Take the first claim. I am only one person among billions. My perspective, therefore, is one among billions: I see only a small sliver of reality as it is. It stands to reason, then, that others’ perspectives on reality might hold as much truth as my own. If I am curious about the cosmos, I want to hear these perspectives. If I care about the monumental challenges of our age—challenges far, far beyond my reach to solve—I want to hear the ideas and solutions of others. Our collective wisdom is our best chance to see all sides of each challenge and, perhaps, arrive at effective solutions.

Now for the second claim. If my perspective is one among billions, it’s also the only one of its kind. I don’t know whether it might hold the key to solving a problem, or blessing another person, or stimulating a discussion that needs to happen. So it’s important that I share it—tempered with the realization of its place as one perspective.

By cultivating this type of humility, we see what we know—and how much we don’t. We can appreciate just how unfathomable a mystery the universe, and the Divine, truly are. With those realizations, we see the value of sharing and listening.

In other words, the value of dialogue.

This is dense stuff. So an example or two is well worth exploring. Let’s look at one next week.

The next post for this blog is all ready to go. It deals with dialogue and airport security. I’m very interested in getting your thoughts on it.

But I can’t bring myself to post it. Not this week.

The complete devastation in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, overshadows everything else for the time being. Our divisive issues melt away, at least for a while, in the face of such suffering. While our daily work is certainly important, calamities like this remind me, at least, that it’s just one part of the human endeavor.

At times like this, other parts of the human endeavor take precedence.

There will be plenty of time for dialogue on Haiti, especially in addressing governance, susceptibility to natural disasters, and the grinding poverty that plagues so many Haitians. Now is not that time.

If you are a person of faith, I invite you to pray, or meditate, or light a candle—whatever your tradition calls you to do—for the people of Haiti. My prayers for them inevitably start and end with silence, because words fail me. But God hears silence too. 

Just as important, please give whatever you can to the relief effort. www.redcross.org is a great place to start. 

We’ll talk more next week.

Our guest is here, and he’s talking evangelism—or, rather, an entirely new and refreshing take on evangelism. (Why are we talking evangelism here? See my last post for background.)

Jeffrey Johnson has written Got Style? Personality-based Evangelism to help Christians share their faith in a way that fits the way they’re wired. The book moves readers away from the one-size-fits-all, passing-out-tracts version of Christian outreach into something that, in some versions, feels very much like dialogue. For this post, he answered a few of my questions, and I present excerpts from his answers below.

Before we get started, a few definitions. Johnson lays out six basic personality styles, and he refers to some of them in our interview. To vastly oversimplify, Assertive refers to the usual stereotype of an evangelist: a direct, verbal salesperson/preacher. Relational, as the name implies, is oriented toward relationships; the evangelizer is more of a counselor or teacher by nature. Incarnational focuses on sharing the gospel (“Good News”) by serving others.

OK. Enough preliminaries. Here we go:

Many outside the Christian faith take offense at traditional evangelism: they see it as an attempt to impose one’s beliefs on others. What would you say to put these people at ease with your approach?

From the outset, evangelism is not about convicting, convincing, or converting the non-Christian. That is the work of God in a person’s heart and mind. As Christians, we ought to share the Good News with passion and purpose, but not with manipulation or maneuvering. Moreover, if evangelism is not done in complement to one’s personality, it is at least forced and at worst faked—often done out of guilt and not love for God or the individual. My book presents personality styles with which people normally engage the world and suggests how they can use these styles to share their faith with that one and the same world, as Christ’s final words directed us to do.

Only a very small percentage (2-3%) of people are wired to “evangelize” using what you call “traditional evangelism”—large-scale crusades, door-to-door calling, street preaching, tract distribution, etc.—and to be honest they are statistically the least effective. The vast majority of people are dominant in Relational and Incarnational styles; they seek first and foremost a genuine relationship with the other person (because that is how they engage the world) before trying to introduce them to a personal relationship with Christ. In the Incarnational style, evangelism will occur over an extended period of time where both respect and rapport are established, so what is shared by the evangelizer is easily received by the evangelized because of the authenticity of the relationship and the knowledge that one only seeks the best for the other.

Let’s dwell on that for a moment. In your book, you say that while many Christians are best suited to evangelize by befriending or serving others, ultimately this should lead to sharing the faith verbally. Those being evangelized, however, sometimes perceive this as an ulterior motive and feel “used.” How does the Got Style? framework circumvent this to create a genuine engagement with the other person?

Before we can really expect people to listen to the Inspired Word, we must validate their Inherent Worth. Even if a person rejects what I have to say, that does not diminish the blessing they can be to me or I can be to them, just as friends. Spending time with people, regardless of the outcomes, should never be viewed as a waste of time. Never. Jesus hung out with people who chose not to follow Him. Christmas is literally about Jesus showing up to spend time with us. He had a reason for coming here—to establish a relationship with us so in turn we might have a relationship with Him. That’s not an ulterior motive; it is the ultimate motive.

To what extent does the Got Style? framework allow evangelism to become a genuinely two-way street, in which each person can share her beliefs, respond in a sensitive manner, and learn from the other’s perspective? To what extent does the evangelizer’s ultimate goal of sharing the gospel allow for this “two-way” perspective?

Got Style? helps people see their own style and better understand other people’s styles, so truly it is not about one-way communication. For the vast majority of people in the Relational, Incarnational, and similar styles, conversations are rooted more in free-flowing, back-and-forth relating of personal experiences than in predetermined scripts. Evangelism occurs over time and with the involvement of multiple people. Therefore it is not a strategy of show up and speak up, but rather show up and listen. The focus is on others, and off of me.

Let’s say, after numerous discussions to get to know the other person, the evangelizer realizes that his friend’s relationship with God might blossom in a Catholic church or Quaker meeting. What would you advise the person to do?

It needs to be understood that evangelism does not seek to introduce a person to a particular expression of the Christian Faith, but rather to Christ Himself. Therefore, once a person has been introduced to Christ and they make a faith commitment, the determination must be made as to where and how to best mature them in their newfound faith, which using your examples could be liturgical and formal or contemplative and informal, or really any expression between those two.

Like so many groups, born-again Christians are often misunderstood and stereotyped. What would you like people to know about born-again Christians that they don’t know now? What stereotypes would you like to clear up?

I think the stereotypes you mention apply to those categorized as Assertives, those who are out there on the fringe, partly because of their outspokenness. Remember, the early church was birthed through the means of the Assertive style, but by midway in the Book of Acts, the style changes dramatically from proclamation to presence evangelism. Paul would put down stakes and stay in a town for an extended period of time, even working a secular job so he could mix and mingle with people outside the Christian faith on their turf and in their terms.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with likely readers of The Dialogue Venture blog?

Personality is very personal. For each of us, it is unique. It defines who we are and directs how we interact with others. Yet people are saying they haven’t found a way to do evangelism naturally, as a part of how they are “wired.” Because evangelism has become associated with something unnatural or forced, it feels “bad.” I never understood why sharing something so good made so many feel so bad—until I realized most people are doing evangelism in a way contrary to the way God made them. We are called to do evangelism out of grace, not guilt. It can be enjoyable, not just an endurable, experience.

Fluff the pillows, vacuum the rugs, and get your questions ready. We’re going to have a guest.

In thinking about the dynamics of dialogue, I’ve become intrigued by evangelism and the tension it introduces between Christianity and the rest of the world. Many Christians view telling others about Christ as a core requirement of their faith. Many of other faiths see the practice as an offensive, old-school sales pitch, with one person pressuring another to convert. That would make evangelism antithetical to dialogue.

It would, that is, if we defined evangelism exclusively as a one-directional hard sell. But could it possibly be that simplistic? My attempt to think it through led to my recent article in Next-Wave.

Since that article appeared, I’ve heard from several Christian leaders who are also working to redefine evangelism. In the process, they may have something to say to those among us who find the traditional model reprehensible.

One of those leaders is Jeffrey Johnson, who’s come out with Got Style? Personality-Based Evangelism. His thesis is that Christians, while all called to evangelism, must approach it according to their individual personalities. If, for instance, you’re more relationally based, you might focus on nonverbal evangelism, rolling up your sleeves and helping your neighbors. If you’re more analytical, perhaps you engage others in thoughtful discussions of certain topics. (Hmm. Sounds like dialogue, yes?) While allowing that a few Christians are hard-wired for assertive evangelism, he questions the overall effectiveness of this approach in a skeptical and diverse society.

So can dialogue and evangelism peacefully coexist? That’s what we aim to find out. Next week, Johnson comes to The Dialogue Venture as part of a blog tour to promote Got Style? I have questions for him, but I’d like to include yours as well.

If you have a question or two, please send them along before Friday noon (Eastern Standard Time). You can use the comment space on this post or just contact me directly. While I can’t guarantee I’ll use every question (especially if we get tons of them), I’ll include as many as I can.

This could be an opportunity to pick the brain of someone who’s trying to break down a few old walls. Help me help him do that. Think up some questions and fire away.

The front-desk person at our local gym can be uncommunicative at times, or so I heard before my wife and I joined recently. I’m drawn to people like that. So I set out to get to know her a bit.

On my first day, I made a few lame jokes while filling out the application. She only responded to the last one, but that gave me hope. Every day thereafter, we exchanged a few words as I checked in. Bit by bit, she started to talk more. Now she gives us a big smile whenever we come in. At 6:45 a.m., that’s a major accomplishment.

In my musings about dialogue, I find myself coming back to a bit of sage advice from the biblical Book of Proverbs: A soft answer turns away wrath (Proverbs 15:1). Have you ever seen this in action? Perhaps you’ve encountered a snarly co-worker whose whole face relaxes when she hears a kind word, a defensive co-worker who shows his human side when someone expresses genuine interest, or even a stressed-out child who responds to a soft voice.

A kind word, a soft voice, genuine interest: these are so easy to give away. Yet the signal they send is game-changing. In their presence, people open up, their hearts soften, their barriers come down—even if only a little at first. They see you as someone who, just maybe, can be trusted. Each “soft answer” builds the trust a bit more.

Now imagine that I wanted to discuss abortion, or gay marriage, or even a possible improvement to the gym with the front-desk person. Because we’ve built a bit of openness and trust, she is much more likely to hear me and respond honestly—in other words, to engage in authentic dialogue.

An apocryphal story from the 1978 Camp David peace accords tells of the opening meeting between U.S. president Jimmy Carter, Egyptian head of state Anwar Sadat, and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. Before delving into control of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements in the Sinai, and other issues that nearly derailed the talks, Carter asked Begin and Sadat to talk about their families. As each man talked affectionately about his spouse and children, his adversary glimpsed the human side of the person across the table. That bond, it was said, contributed to the breakthrough. The soft answer, the genuine interest, inspired them to dialogue more deeply than if they had approached the negotiations without it.

Here as elsewhere, I think people of faith have an exceptional advantage. A connection with the Divine fosters what St. Paul called “the fruit of the Spirit,” including gentleness. We can be gentle because it springs from the Divine within us. I found an online devotional that expresses this well from the evangelical Christian perspective.

Try it. Find an unpleasant person and respond to her with a soft answer. The results may surprise you.

Put a recovering fundamentalist and a professional astrologer in a car for an hour, and what do you get?

What you get is interesting, to say the least.

We’ve been talking lately about the need to set aside our preconceptions in order to truly hear the other and make dialogue more fruitful. But how does this work in real life? A story might give us some insight, so here we go.

Once upon a time, I took part in a writers’ group with an accomplished astrologer. As we went around the room to introduce ourselves, and she began to discuss her profession, all my defenses went up—the vestige of my fundamentalist Christian past, during which I had learned to equate astrology with evil.

How ironic that we would have to drive to an event together.

During that drive, we discussed her approach to astrology, and I had a choice. I could leave my conservative filter in place, spending the whole time “defending myself” against this “evil” and trying to find holes in the theory behind it. I could also lay the filter aside.

By choosing the second course, I absorbed so much more than I would have otherwise. She told me—and I heard—about the vast gulf between serious astrology and the tabloid version, the practical aims and goals of the profession, and other things that, together, painted a portrait of a viable alternative worldview.

The moral: What I heard about astrology from an astrologer was far different from what I had heard from Christian preachers. Only by setting aside the preacher’s voice in my head could I begin to grasp the reality of the astrologer’s world.

What difference did it make? I still don’t consult astrologers, and I could probably quibble with aspects of their thinking. But in my fundamentalist days, I feared astrology as a wicked practice that could seduce me if I didn’t watch out. An honest conversation dispelled that fear forever—and allowed me to approach other belief systems with curiosity and welcome rather than fear.

Perhaps more important, by setting aside my preconceptions, I could extend grace and a listening ear to my astrologer friend. How many of us could use a dose of that?

This past Wednesday, our interim priest said his last Mass before retiring to Maine. In honor of the occasion, allow me to tell our dialogue story.

He would have been at home in the Middle Ages; I fall into a fuzzy moderate-to-liberal spot on the spectrum. He lamented the decline of proper authority in the Church. He summarily dismissed many perspectives I found worthy of exploration. Some of his comments were withering. Yet when I objected to a point in his sermon one Sunday, I could not manage to keep my mouth shut.

That led to nearly a year’s worth of email discussion on all manner of things spiritual. We exchanged views on evangelism. We wrestled over the Jesus Seminar and the literal truth (or lack thereof) of the Bible. We discussed the state of our own local congregation. 

An academic exercise? Not even close. This priest came to our church when I was in a pivotal but delicate phase of reevaluating my beliefs. My inner wrestling kindled a desire to talk with clergy, because we think about the same things and they’re more educated than I am. Into this situation walks a conservative, combative old priest.

And the dialogue changed my thinking in some unexpected ways.

For one thing, it gave me a place to articulate the vague theological cross-currents in my head. I realized, for instance, that it was possible to hold the Bible as divinely inspired and still accept it as what Marcus Borg calls it: a book written by humans about God. I decided that my progressive friends were right in their embrace of gays and lesbians but maybe not in their denial of the Resurrection. The dialogue allowed me not so much to adopt the priest’s ideas but to test my own.

In short, I learned more about myself, more about what I could believe, and perhaps even a tiny bit more about the Divine.  

Not that the discussion was not all peaches and cream. His emails could be strident; I got exhausted at times. Moreover, I couldn’t see that the dialogue was giving the priest anything new to think about. Is dialogue even worth the effort when one party gets nothing out of it?

Every time I worried about this, I came back to one email. 

Early on, I expressed a desire not to let our discussions get in the way of his church work, and his response stunned me: “If only you knew how deeply many clergy, myself included, long for discussions of this kind.”

We’ve talked here about dialogue’s role in resolving issues and promoting mutual understanding. But maybe there’s more to it than that. Maybe dialogue can be a tonic for the gnawing loneliness that is part and parcel of the human condition. Even if we solve nothing, even if we learn nothing, we have talked. We have listened to others share the things that matter to them. Sometimes that simple connection is all we can ask—and more than we could ever hope.

I wrote last week that for dialogue to work, we have to open our minds and hearts and keep them open, even when the discussion boils over. But how on earth can we do that?

I don’t think we can—not on our own.

Yes, there are things we can do. The longer we practice openness, for instance, the more it becomes woven into us. Eventually, we become open almost by habit. 

But practice alone is rarely enough to effect lasting change. One reason is the typical failure of sheer willpower: think dieting and you know what I mean. A second reason is the position in which openness places us: by definition, we become extraordinarily vulnerable—especially to those who attack us and defend themselves. The willingness to be open is one thing; the emotional capacity to be open is quite another. It calls for an inner strength that few can muster alone.

This is where the Divine comes in. 

As we seek to encounter God on an ongoing basis—in prayer, in meditation, in reflective reading of sacred texts, in communities of believers, in the world—the Divine Spirit fosters a connection with us at the core of our being. In the process, that same Spirit also molds us, gradually, into people more “in the image of God”: people of peace, of justice, of compassion. The Benedictines call this conversion of life: a slow, persistent turning of one’s life, from the inside out, to something better.

That has two profound effects on dialogue. First, through this conversion process, we find ourselves not so much practicing virtues like openness as watching them flourish within us. The connection with the Divine opens us automatically to the world beyond our own skin. We begin to see things from a larger perspective. We become acutely aware of our place in the universe: as one person among billions, with one perspective among billions. We almost can’t help but be more open.

Second, when we enter into this encounter, we no longer need to muster the inner strength alone—because we no longer are alone. In the Christian and Jewish scriptures, God continually reassures his people with the words “I am with you.”

This, I think, is why people of faith are uniquely positioned to lead the movement toward fruitful dialogue—because they are connected with a transformative Power than can orient them toward fruitful dialogue. How ironic, then, that many people of faith have developed reputations for the very shouting and contentiousness that plague us today.

It is time for us to act out the words of the magnificent Shaker hymn: “To turn, turn will be our delight, till by turning, turning we come round right.” If we turn toward God, we turn toward dialogue—and take up a critical role in transforming a world that so desperately needs it.

Do we have to give up our beliefs before we engage in dialogue?

I thought about this when a Religion News Service article led me to the Civility Project. Co-founded by a Democratic consultant and a Southern Baptist adviser to Mitt Romney (that combination alone should get your attention), the project sprang from a frustration with the shouting that currently passes for civil discourse. Central to the project is the Civility Pledge: a promise to be civil in public discourse and behavior, respect others regardless of their position, and stand against incivility.

What a great idea. Others have worked on civility for considerably longer and explored it more intently—P. M. Forni’s Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins is especially notable—but it’s wonderful to see a call for civility from the grass roots. The more, the better.

Two items on the Civility Project website, though, brought the belief question to mind. One page states that the project does not involve “a surrender of personal beliefs, convictions or ideology.” Meanwhile, a poster comments that civil dialogue is impossible until fundamentalists stop preventing civil marriages for GLBT people. This expresses her personal conviction, and she has made it a precondition for civil dialogue.

Can you actually be civil and not surrender these things?

I think you can—but not by leading with “never surrender.” That orientation almost automatically puts us on the defensive, listening to the other not so much to truly understand her but to find the holes in her thinking. If the other person realizes we’re doing this, she’ll perceive herself as vulnerable to attack. She too becomes defensive, we learn little about each other, and the dialogue has no value.

So how do we go about this? I think the key is not to surrender our beliefs, but to set them aside for purposes of the dialogue. In doing so, we clear our mind to consider the other’s perspective from the inside out. We can hear her logic, her passion, her values more clearly. As a result, we connect more deeply, build trust, and open up an opportunity for deeper dialogue. This gives us a richer understanding of the other perspective, which we can then explore from our own value system. 

Imagine if we tried this with, say, gay marriage. GLBT people might find that conservative Christians are not necessarily homophobic, but rather trying in good faith to see the issue from their biblical worldview. Conservative Christians might hear the life stories of gay people and realize that being gay is not a choice, but rather who they are at their very essence. 

At the end of the dialogue, conservatives might still conclude that homosexuality is sinful, and GLBT people might still be frustrated with them. But they have understood the opposing perspective more deeply. More important, they have seen the human being behind the perspective, and that can lead to something bigger than dialogue—compassion and peace across the ideological divide.

Let’s try some word association. I’ll give you three words, and you say the first word that comes to mind. Here we go:

Intolerant.

Rigid.

Confrontational.

Did you read these words and instantly think fundamentalist, or conservative, or something like that? I have, for many years.

To those of us who think along such lines, let me tell a story.

A friend recently wrote me about two of his old classmates, buddies since high school, who have had a falling out. One is a mainstream Protestant minister, seminary-trained, with 20 years’ experience. The other just became born again and is sharing her newfound (fundamentalist) faith with the minister. My friend perceives that it’s the minister, “liberal” as she is, who’s become defensive.

I can imagine that, because I see it in some of the progressives I know. They’ll embrace anyone of any stripe—except conservatives. They view fundamentalists through stereotypes and have little interest in hearing traditional perspectives.

So what does this show us? Certainly that intolerance is not confined to one specific worldview. If we go deeper, though, we might just find that (to borrow from Pogo) we have met the intolerant and they is us.

I know this is true of me. I am delighted to enter into dialogue with Hindus, Baha’is, New Agers, gays, you name it. But Baptists? Health insurance executives? Do I have to?

Yes. Dialogue calls me to encounter everyone. No exceptions.

But how? This is what makes authentic dialogue far more than just a series of techniques for use once we’re at the table. To talk with those who set our teeth on edge and our blood pressure soaring, we have to prepare our inner selves—to till the soil of our souls, as it were—long before we start the dialogue itself. By cultivating such virtues as humility, openness, an ability to risk, and a commitment to love, we gradually become people of clear mind and open heart, which empowers us to share with anyone.

Goodness knows we need this. What might happen if, say, single-payer advocates and health insurance executives were to prepare their inner selves and then come back to the table? No, they probably wouldn’t agree on a strategy for health care reform. But at least they could conduct a civil conversation, a give-and-take that might clarify the issues for the rest of us—including our elected leaders—and thus clear a path to a better solution.

Idealistic? Perhaps. But given the current state of the health care discussion—or the debate over abortion, or gay marriage, or any other issue—surely it is a place to start.