Every Friday, I (Rebecca) write an exclusive post for our newsletter subscribers. 

I work pretty hard at these, and I’m actually quite proud of them! What’s been so encouraging, though, is seeing how they resonate with so many of our subscribers. Since we started doing this exclusive content model, our newsletter open rates have almost doubled so I know you guys like what I’m doing! 

If you’re not signed up to the newsletter yet, I wanted to give you a bit of a Black Friday peek at some of the exclusive content that our newsletter subscribers got back in October. And of course, you should subscribe here to not miss out on the newsletters like this in the future! 

But without further ado, here’s the post! 

—

On the October 12th podcast, I shared the story of the first time I stood up to a Christian authority in my life.

If you haven’t listened to this week’s podcast yet, you really should (and you can find it here)–it’s one that touches on a topic that I am incredibly passionate about: the devolving of evangelical education.

Something I’ve been noticing recently happening in virtually every space on the internet, in “real life,” in the church, in politics, literally everywhere is this concerning “us vs them” mentality.

One of the ways that we get this “us vs them” mentality is, frankly, due to a lack of education about the “other.” For example, when I was in Jr. High, my Baptist youth group had a whole night of youth group dedicated to talking about why Catholics aren’t “real Christians.” I was 11 or 12, listening to my youth pastor explain what Catholics believe just thinking the whole time, “This dude is full of bologna.” See, my best friend at the time was Catholic and I spent a lot of time at their house. I did prayers with them at night. I went to her sister’s first baptisms, their first communions. This guy may have been describing something, but it sure wasn’t Catholicism.

But why was I the only one who seemed to get that? Because no one else there actually knew a single thing about Catholics.

When people grow up in very sheltered, cloistered communities it can be easy to think we know more than we actually do.

It’s not because of a lack of intelligence, it’s just about a lack of education. When you don’t know what you don’t know, you don’t know how much you don’t know!

What can be tricky, however, is when we deconstruct from the beliefs of those sheltered, cloistered spaces but don’t deconstruct the way of thinking.

It’s interesting how much reactivity, misplaced anger and fear are used to drive people to action these days. (And by interesting I mean absolutely terrifying, but also just academically a very interesting phenomenon to observe.) Connor and I have been talking quite a bit recently about what we can do to be less cloistered in our personal lives, less tribal, less reactive when we come across someone who believes something that we consider vehemently to be immoral or unjust.

Ironically, we often come back to the same principles we try to use here in our work to make sure we’re speaking and acting out of a place of evidence and logic rather than reactivity and disgust. So I thought I’d outline for you a few principles we’ve been implementing in the Lindenbach house, and what I’ve been thinking through in an attempt to figure out how I can, in my own little way in my own little life, help combat some of this us-vs-them, all-or-nothing thinking we can be prone to.

Now, these situations are more about actual, real-life people and social media rather than larger, systemic issues. I think we need to talk about those things differently because theologies don’t have souls–people do. 🙂 So let’s go!

1. Be comfortable saying “I don’t know.”

This may sound stupid to some people, but when you’re raised in a faith culture that sees “I don’t know” as an admission that you might go to hell… this can be a big deal.

Weirdly enough, when we’re trained to be 100% certain about faith answers–even when they’re often contentious points across denominations–we can easily fall into the trap of 100% confidence about everything we believe. Even the things not based in education or experience.

When we’re comfortable saying “I don’t know,” and actually asking ourselves, “But how much do I really know?” about topics we feel strongly about, we can become students again. We can learn, we can grow, we can change.

“I don’t know” isn’t a dirty phrase. It’s a freeing one.

2. Be slow to assign motives.

When we’re speaking from a place of reactivity or fear, it can be easy to jump to worst case scenario, straw-men attacks of people.

If we categorize someone as “one of us,” or “on our side,” and then they disagree with us on something that can feel like a betrayal if we were raised in a community where we were expected to all agree on everything.

But if someone has proven themselves to have good character, to be fighting the same fight as you, to agree with all the core principles that guide your lives, then we simply must have space for disagreement on the peripheries.

Giving “benefit of the doubt” doesn’t mean that we ignore red flags or push real threats under the rug. But what it does mean is that we assume good intent until proven otherwise. In our reactive, us-vs-them culture, often we’re rewarded for the opposite. Rage and disgust without any evidence is not healthy. If there’s reason to be angry, then there should be evidence. Not just wild speculations and emotional outrage.

We’ve worked so, so hard to make sure we remain evidence-based in our critiques, in our arguments, in our message. We have worked to make sure that our anger is backed up by cold, hard facts. And I will very, very gently say that it is very beneficial for us when our audience’s critiques of the authors we discuss remain based on facts and not on extreme straw-men representations of their viewpoints, too. Trust me, their stuff is wild enough that we don’t need to be making stuff up for outrage–it’s outrageous as it is!

3. Unnecessary arguments are like zits. If you pick them, you’ll make a mess and leave a scar.

One of the topics we’ve talked about in the patreon group is how a lot of us who deconstruct can have very strong opinions regarding faith practices that, if we pick a fight about them, can drive people away from us rather than create a bridge. For example, worship music. Many people who deconstruct have a hard time with worship music because it’s so tied to so much from their problematic church past.

Worship music can be used to manipulate people. But it’s also just a universal experience to want to sing together in a group of others, it’s a very therapeutic and euphoric activity, and feels like a refreshing encouragement to many, many people.

If we, whose primary concern in the church is about power imbalances and injustice, focus all our energy on criticizing things like worship music, or whether or not the church has pews or seats, or if they are singing the right songs, or any other small thing that isn’t actually the core problem, we alienate and drive people away.

Friends, we are tired. All of us are tired. The last three years have felt like ten. If we want to combat a culture of rage, reactivity, and fear we have to stop sometimes and say, “not a fight worth having with this person.” Save your energy for the fights that get to the heart of the matter, not the red herrings that are just causing antagonism and hard feelings without actually bringing about any real change.

4. Remember my part in the body of Christ, and stop trying to be the whole body.

One of my best friends and I joke all the time that we agree on all the basic parenting principles, and execute them all completely opposite. We did baby sleep differently, we feed our kids differently, we have different screen time boundaries, different ways of educating our kids, different ways of virtually everything. But we agree on the core principles, we just have different kids so we have to do different things! And both of us are completely supportive of the other, even while knowing that we’d never do it that way ourselves.

When we first started this work way back before I was even a mother, I would get really frustrated when I’d see people speaking out against injustice but not specifically speaking about the same stuff we were talking about. But what I quickly realized was that we just had different “kids.” And we were clearly advancing the same larger cause for justice and truth, but just from different angles.

We had different kids, so of course we’re going to do things differently. It reminds me of the famous “Body of Christ” passage in 1 Corinthians 12, and please I do suggest, read it again even if you think you remember it word-for-word, it’s such a powerful passage:

Do you hear that? You’re allowed to just be a foot. You have permission to just be one small part. You don’t have to do everything, you just have to do your bit. Do you understand how freeing that is? The whole world isn’t on your shoulders. You’re a part of a larger movement, a larger body. To me, when I see just how much work there is to be done, that’s such an encouragement.

5. Learn to differentiate between disagreement and danger.

This is what it really comes down to. Because when there’s danger, you absolutely DO need to acknowledge it and fight. You absolutely DO need to speak up. And if proven bad, we absolutely DO need to talk about motives and character of people who have harmed and continue to harm others.

I don’t need to really tell you guys that, though–you’ve seen us stand up against toxic teachings, and you’ve seen the good fruit of healing, life, and safety that comes from resisting these dangerous messages!

What’s tricky, though, is that often our bodies throw up “danger” signs when we’re just experiencing disagreement.

And again, I think this is especially true for those of us who grew up in very cloistered faith circles.

We can disagree about things we feel very, very passionately about without hurting each other. If that person is not trying to control other people, not trying to force others to agree with them, but is simply capable of living side by side seeing the world in different ways, it is incumbent on us to not try to control them, either.

Disagreement often feels dangerous. It triggers our nervous systems, makes us feel defensive, and can be translated as a threat. But often it’s just disagreement. Sometimes it’s strong disagreement! But the best thing we can do for our relationships and our witness to the people around us is to not lash out during disagreement because we feel threatened, but instead step back, calm down, look at the situation logically, and figure out if this is truly dangerous, or just a difference of opinion, perspective, or experience.

I really wish that the wider evangelical culture would become more comfortable with disagreement.

Maybe then we wouldn’t be living in so much fear of the “others” around us, or be so hesitant to hold ourselves to the same rigorous academic standards of the general public. Maybe if we weren’t so afraid of disagreement we’d be more open to changing our minds about toxic teachings. Maybe if we weren’t so disagreement-averse we’d actually learn to have ears to hear and eyes to see.

But as for me and my house, we’re just going to work on being hospitable, gracious, and kind while holding firm boundaries.

It’s a tricky job, as Richard Beck says in his book Unclean, but goodness if it isn’t an important one.

What do you think? What else would you add as a tip for how to remain civil with people we disagree with? Did you do something that worked really well this Thanksgiving with difficult family members? Let’s chat in the comments–and don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter if you haven’t already!