We are nearing what is shaping up to be one of the most contentious elections in our nation’s history. For those deeply invested in the well-being of this country, the swelling cultural unrest only adds to the sense of urgency. Nevertheless, the supreme command for those of us who follow Christ remains to love Him with all that we are and then to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. In this two-part article, we want to offer what we hope will be a helpful approach to salvaging relationships in the midst of a very divisive time.
With this in mind, consider this basic schematic in the hope of putting these conflicts into perspective. At the risk of oversimplification, let’s break human ways of looking at the world into four categories: opinions, ideas, beliefs, and core convictions. By examining each of these, we’ll be able to take a more holistic look at our interactions. In this first article, we’ll be considering opinions and ideas.
As with physical anatomy, these parts are distinguishable but inseparable, with each interpenetrating the other. Though all play an integral role in a given personality, each category increases in depth, moving us further and further into the human personality. Thus, opinions pertain to matters of taste; ideas play out in the life of the mind, giving rise to thoughts; beliefs combine thought with action; core convictions constitute a person’s fundamental commitments and deepest intuitions. Because core convictions go to a person’s very heart, they cannot be changed without changing the person themselves. A change of opinion or ideas can bring its share of personal upheaval, but a change of core convictions never leaves an identity untransformed. Persuading someone that G.K. Chesterton is right about the culinary revelation of Stilton Cheese is one thing, but convincing someone to reconsider their views on sexual ethics is tantamount to asking them to change who they are. Generally speaking, most of the issues that divide us (religion, sex, politics) touch on a person’s core convictions. This doesn’t mean that we avoid these subjects, of course, but it does mean that we need to navigate them with care and sensitivity.
One important caveat: this breakdown is meant to function mainly as a heuristic device to stimulate thinking about our interactions during times of serious disagreement. It goes without saying that the complexity of human vision exceeds these four neat categories. It’s our hope, however, that they will impart a measure of understanding for those difficult conversations that unfold in our kitchens and living rooms this election season. That said, let’s take a closer look at each category.
The Subtle Power of Persuasion in Shaping Opinions
To say that opinions are largely matters of taste should not mislead us into thinking of them as inconsequential. The human personality, with its mad flurry of intuitions, gifts, quirks, and habits, constitutes the ambient background of opinions. We’re beginning with them not because of their superficiality or insignificance but because of their relative flexibility. That is, they can be changed without drastically altering a person’s character. Imagine you have a friend who’s a true cineaste, as my friend, Dr. Kenneth Boa, happens to be. Let’s say you and Dr. Boa share enthusiasm for the work of Alfred Hitchcock. While the general critical consensus is that Vertigo is Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Dr. Boa thinks that honor should go to Shadow of a Doubt. If Dr. Boa manages to persuade me of the superiority of his choice (unlikely), I remain largely unchanged in the deepest sense. I’ve modified a particular point of taste, but not my very identity. It goes without saying that if Dr. Boa tried to change my opinion by attacking Vertigo, the likely success of his project would be slim indeed. As a general rule, opinions can’t be changed through attacks. If we want to change someone’s opinion, we need to aim at persuasion.
Bridging the Gap Between Idealism and Reality
Ideas are largely theoretical in the sense that their abstract nature means they haven’t necessarily collided with the hard walls of reality. I have a friend who works for a large engineering company, and he frequently faces challenges when he deals with the people who design the machinery for his factory floors. The discrepancy between the designer’s ideal setting for the machinery and the actual conditions on the factory floor is often rather pronounced. The solution is to have the designer leave the “ivory tower” of her office and take a tour of the facilities to ensure that realism beats out idealism.
Their abstract nature notwithstanding, ideas still retain a higher degree of inflexibility than opinions. The designer I mentioned above may have an ideal setting in mind, but personal taste alone can’t dictate the construction of industrial machinery. A rigid set of rules must be followed. Ideas may be idealistic, but changing them still requires a readjustment of how a person thinks the world works. Think of the starry-eyed college student who leaves the world of urban social theory to face the harsh realities of being a teacher in an inner-city school. When it comes to the world of ideas, theory must be balanced with practice. It’s the reason medical students are required to complete a residency. Similarly, if we want to challenge people’s ideas, we need to balance theory with practice and do our best to show that the idea we’re critiquing fails to make full contact with reality. Once again, if persuasion is the goal, we want to pursue the conversation in a respectful manner, taking into account that a change in ideas is tantamount to a change in one’s view of how the world works. We’ll sneak in a quick plug for great stories here. Though this hardly exhausts the joys of reading a fine novel, skillful writers balance theory with practice by putting flesh and bones on ideas and marching them into the world. A treatise on the dangers of revolutionary politics may bury its urgency in a heavily conceptual language, but Dostoevsky’s searing vision of it in The Demons offers a holistic account that’s as vivid as it is appalling. If you want to become a skillful interlocutor, read great novels.
In the next article, we’ll turn to the two deepest categories, namely, beliefs and core convictions, and consider how an understanding of both can reshape our future conversations.
Photo Credit: SWN Design
Kenneth Boa equips people to love well (being), learn well (knowing), and live well (doing). He is a writer, teacher, speaker, and mentor and is the President of Reflections Ministries, The Museum of Created Beauty, and Trinity House Publishers.
Publications by Dr. Boa include Conformed to His Image, Handbook to Prayer, Handbook to Leadership, Faith Has Its Reasons, Rewriting Your Broken Story, Life in the Presence of God, Leverage, and Recalibrate Your Life.
Dr. Boa holds a B.S. from Case Institute of Technology, a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, a Ph.D. from New York University, and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in England.
