We Can Build a Beautiful City: The Truth Will Set Us Free (Part Two)
This is the second of a four-part series called “We Can Build a Beautiful City.”
How do we build a beautiful city together when we are divided on so many fronts? My own optimism and hope is experiencing a resurrection of sorts based on what I am witnessing firsthand in my own community.
That premise “We Can Build a Beautiful City” rests on the assumption of cooperation. The “we” means that the hard work of community building cannot be done by individuals alone. We have to cooperate and collaborate.
In the first post of this series, my intent was to focus our attention on our individual responsibilities at the local level. I proposed that we should refuse to outsource our responsibilities to the government for all of our pressing societal challenges. Legislation can only take us so far. You can read that post here. The goal was not to question the value or role of good government, but to place it within its proper context, and to encourage local people to take ownership for tackling our community’s toughest challenges.
I continue to be convinced that there are major societal challenges that we should confront and on which we make progress at the local level. In York, PA, we are seeing the early fruit of a four-year dialogue between our county police chiefs and Black and Latino communities. We recently launched a dialogue between our county’s economic leaders and local leaders of color to talk about how we work together so that York is a thriving, inclusive place for everyone. A plan of action is emerging as we speak and there are various strategies being formed in other pockets of the community. These are more than just conversations but actual plans with measurable goals. The diverse people involved are building relationships and trust in each other but there is much work to be done.
We can build together even if we don’t agree as long as we are united in a relentless pursuit of the truth. Here is how we do that.
Welcome the opportunity to engage in civil dialogue
Pick a pressing issue that requires more dialogue at a local level: healthcare, affordable housing, homelessness, racial injustice, economic opportunity, community policing, school choice, etc. Now imagine a table of 8-10 people who have been carefully selected and included to represent a diversity of perspectives. This group is diverse on numerous levels: politically, ethnically, socio-economically, educational background, age, gender, marital status, etc.
This imaginary exercise might give you heartburn, but I get energized by the prospect of healthy dialogue. I am not naive though. I am aware of times when such groups have been called together and it has been explosive to the point of outbursts, accusations, and even people storming out. Our perspectives can be so far apart that if one set of participants becomes dominant, demanding, paternalistic, or refuses to listen to reason, all bets are off.
There is ample opportunity in the public square to engage each other in civil dialogue and we should welcome that, not run away from it. Many of our neighbors have chosen to withdraw from engagement. I have had numerous private conversations with people who have confessed that they are afraid of being attacked or maligned for their honestly held beliefs.
When we began our first discussion between local police chiefs and leaders in the Black Ministers Association, one of the local chiefs expressed such fear on behalf of the chiefs. They were afraid the flavor of the national dialogue on policing would be present in our meeting. At the end of the night, hard and direct things had been said by both sides, but a pathway was opened for more dialogue. It was the police chiefs who came back to me and pleaded that we have more sessions. Everyone welcomed the opportunity for civil dialogue.
As we take local responsibility for our communities, we have to see dialogue as a critical first step to progress. A starting point is acknowledging, “You are over there on this issue and I am over here. Help me to understand why you are over there and I will help you understand why I am here.”
“A starting point is acknowledging, ‘You are over there on this issue and I am over here. Help me to understand why you are over there on this issue and I will help you understand why I am here.’”
Real, honest, transparent dialogue can lead to deeper understanding but also to action and progress.
Recognize that outrage easily leads to violence
Our community will have to fight to stay on the straight and narrow road of healthy civil dialogue. There are off-ramps that we should refuse to take.
When dialogue never culminates or when it breaks down, it is easy to become frustrated, upset, and eventually outraged. It sometimes feels like the volume nob on our collective outrage amp is at level ten. We need a timeout.
I am not convinced we can maintain the outrage for long. Have you done a personal scan of how exhausting it is to be angry all the time? Arguing with people who won’t listen and raging at their stupidity takes us to a dark and tiring place.
While outrage is not sustainable, we still have a measure of hope as long as outrage is being voiced. Outrage at least says we care about our social challenges and are angry enough to gripe and grumble about it.
We need to redirect and channel outrage into something more healthy like honest dialogue.
If dialogue never happens, outrage will run its course and eventually will look for an outlet or an off-ramp. There are two exit ramps outrage can take: violence or ambivalence.
There are isolated individuals and groups that will go down the path of violence. We sometimes see groups physically clash at protests. There are lone wolf terrorizers who attack their enemies.
I am not convinced though that Americans who idolize their comfort and security will engage in civil war. War is costly and probably too disruptive for modern Americans addicted to the easy life. It would take a serious threat to our collective national prosperity to move most of us to war. Yes, there are groups who are marginalized who don’t enjoy prosperous lives that might be willing to go down a violent path, but the vast sum of Americans would not stomach that level of disruption and cost once they tasted it.
Acknowledge that ambivalence is a more likely danger
The majority will take the other exit ramp toward ambivalence. A shrug of the shoulders that says, “I give up” is more probable. “There is no possibility of finding common ground. We can’t possibly find agreement and therefore are doomed to continue the divisive rhetoric and political wars.”
Outrage about our social challenges can morph into ambivalence and this will be deadly to our communities. Ambivalence is the surest way to ensure our challenges are never confronted.
“Ambivalence is the surest way to ensure our challenges are never confronted.”
The kind of ambivalence I am cautioning is when the community develops mixed and even contradictory feelings about our social crises. We are already ambivalent about homelessness in our country. We strongly dislike the idea that people are homeless, it saddens us to see homeless people, we might even give money to a homeless person, yet we also have developed biased attitudes that assume the homeless are lazy and unwilling to improve their situation. We call the police to get homeless people away from our public spaces so we can enjoy a meal at a restaurant. Our response is a mixed lot.
We are ambivalent about gun violence, the impact of trauma on kids, our diets that lead to the world’s highest rates of heart disease, and a host of other issues. Most of us would express mixed and even contradictory sentiments about these topics. It’s not that we don’t care, we do, but we just don’t know what to do to solve the problem or we just lack the courage to try.
Resist ambivalence
When outrage takes the exit in the road toward ambivalence it doesn’t just stop there. Ambivalence evolves into apathy.
Apathy is when we move beyond the contradictory and mixed feelings about a social challenge to the loss of motivation and care. If ambivalence is the shoulder-shrug, apathy is the look away. “I won’t look at the problem anymore because I have stopped caring. Any motivation I might have had within me has been sapped because I have resigned and even given up. That issue will never be solved because people can’t agree. I won’t invest any more energy in it because it is just too tiring to even care.”
“If ambivalence is mixed or contradictory feelings, and apathy is the loss of motivation and care, passivity is accepting whatever happens without response or resistance.”
Apathy inevitably leads to the kind of “creeping passivity” mentioned in part one. If ambivalence is mixed or contradictory feelings, and apathy is the loss of motivation and care, passivity is accepting whatever happens without response or resistance.
Homeless people sleep in the snow and I just look away and accept that someone will find a freezing man dead one day. That is passivity.
A 16-year old is gunned down near my school and we just accept that gun violence is the status quo and move on to another day.
City schools can’t overcome the social challenges of a student population with an 80% poverty rate, and therefore kindergarten students progress on to first grade without the ability to recognize letters and articulate their sounds. By third grade, they won’t be able to read. “Oh well.”
We move from mixed and contradictory feelings to looking away, to not even responding or resisting. Outrage becomes ambivalence, then apathy, and finally passivity.
We do nothing.
Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Once outrage becomes ambivalence our community will be held hostage to our social challenges until someone finally wakes up from the lull.
Speak your truth
Our community has to take responsibility to tackle our most complex challenges without outsourcing all of the solutions to legislative action.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Once we have taken responsibility, we must engage in civil dialogue with diverse, inclusive, and fully representative people ready to tackle challenges together.
As we join the table of dialogue, every participant needs to be encouraged to voice what they believe is the truth. Speak your truth and do it boldly with humility. You likely have something of value to add that we all need to hear.
Nothing can be worse for honest dialogue than when participants are forced to sit in silence, afraid to voice their opinions. I see it happen all the time and it causes people to boil because they want to offer an idea, or challenge a belief, but they are afraid of being attacked if they speak up.
We must allow our community members to be honest and transparent. Everyone needs to be heard fairly. People’s words should not be twisted. We should be slow to arrive at simplistic assumptions about people’s beliefs and not be too quick to dismiss their ideas. Questions should be asked that guarantee every participant is being fully understood.
We should ask people why they came to believe a particular position. Such questions create empathy and can lead to deeper understanding.
What if instead of formulating objections, we listened with the prospect that someone might actually have a fair perspective or a piece of the truth? We need active listeners who are open to exploration.
Do not fear where the truth will lead us
All truth is God’s truth, therefore we should never fear the truth wherever it turns up. We don’t have to fear the truth even when it comes out of the mouth of unlikely people. Jesus said, “The truth will set you free.”
“All truth is God’s truth.”
If we are constantly in a defensive posture, we might end up shielding ourselves from the truth.
Openness to listening is not weakness, but strength. It takes serious confidence and courage to allow our most foundational beliefs to be challenged. I regularly read articles and books that challenge my Christian beliefs. Over the years I have dismantled narrow-minded ideas, reformed shaky ones, and have been bolstered to believe more firmly things like the resurrection of Jesus. None of this would have happened if I didn’t actively pursue the truth by allowing my beliefs to come under scrutiny.
The diverging landscape of belief in the US is an opportunity for listening and exploration. Let’s face it, we are not likely going to agree on everything. The most recent Pew Religious Landscape study identified that 70% of our population identify as some stripe of Christian, 6% as a non-Christian faith (ie Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism), and 23% of us are religious “nones,” meaning we are unaffiliated, atheist, or agnostics. This last category continues to grow rapidly.
As a Christian, I love hearing from people who believe differently than me. I value the stories, perspectives, and personal history that led them to their current place of belief. It does not rattle me to discover that people of other faiths are also able to articulate the truth. All truth is God’s truth. I also winsomely share my own faith when asked.
I am pained as a Christian to hear the stories of people who have been repelled by the Christian faith due to negative experiences or scandalous behavior. So many of the objections I hear voiced by the growing religious “nones” resonate with me as well. Their critiques are ones that I have heard numerous Christian pastors voice as deep frustrations as well. My atheist friends are often surprised by how many points of agreement we share.
Each of us should try to boldly seek the truth together. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could share coffee or a beer and feel free to challenge each other? We shouldn’t be afraid of each other’s skepticism but welcome it. We should push each other to offer proof and validation of our most deeply held beliefs.
I recently made a proposal to a donor who proceeded to dismantle my ideas. His skepticism was tough to handle, but he was right. There were flaws in my proposal. His questions helped me tighten my argument and make it better.
Sometimes we are wrong. Why is that so hard to confess? Growth is impossible without recognizing we are immature and in need of progress.
“Sometimes we are wrong. Why is that so hard to confess? Growth is impossible without recognizing we are immature and in need of progress.”
Are you open to new ideas and different perspectives on your deeply held beliefs?
The truth will set us free
Once we get the dialogue going, we have to allow each other to boldly speak our truths without fear of reprisal or rejection. It is in this free exchange of ideas that we test each other. Iron sharpens iron.
We should not fear where our search for the truth will take us.
The Golden Rule demands that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. If you believe your neighbor is in error, why on earth would you let them continue in it?
If you believe your potentially immune-compromised friend is being too lax about mask-wearing, the loving response is gentle persuasion, not passivity.
If my friend who is an atheist believes my Christianity is making me a narrow-minded bigot, the loving thing to do is not avoid talking about it but challenge my deeply held beliefs.
If I believe my friend’s atheism is leading him to a life that is devoid of joy, meaning, and purpose, why would I not winsomely try to convince him otherwise?
“If you believe your neighbor is in error, why on earth would you let them continue in it?”
The truth will set us free. The truth can lead us to the kind of progress needed to build a beautiful city.
Nothing can be more detrimental to building a beautiful city than ambivalence, apathy, and passivity about the truth. Ambivalence will shackle us to error and the ongoing ruin of our community.
Do we want a beautiful city free of violence, racism, classism, sexism, greed, self-righteousness, partisanship, and ongoing division that is wasting our communities? These are shackles and fetters that must be broken and only the truth can do that.
So let us sit together in the public square and boldly pursue the truth together. We can do it with openness, transparency, humility, laughter, and joy.
We may not arrive at a complete agreement on the truth needed to unshackle us from our most pressing social challenges, but our communities need us to make a concerted effort.
