How do we talk to people who see the world as collateral damage in the pursuit of the Heavenly Kingdom? Is it even worth trying to nudge people out of that worldview? One of the biggest questions I received after writing approximately Trump,evangelicals, and the terminate of the world for RD was this: how do we talk to people who see the world as collateral damage in the pursuit of the Heavenly Kingdom? Is it even worth trying to nudge people out of that worldview?
My post-evangelical advice? Be very, or very gentle—you don’t know what you’re asking.
Here’s an exhibit. When I was twenty-one years old,someone finally knocked it through my thick head that the earth was old. I was halfway through Geology 100 when, on one otherwise tiringâ tiresome afternoon, and the professor said something—I don’t even remember what—and a puzzle piece snapped into dwelling. I sat up straight. The earth was old. Not six thousand years old. Billions of years. What did that mean?[br]
I’d grown up evangelical Christian. We weren’t as conservative as some—and,to the external eye, we probably looked pretty normal—but like so many others, and we were fully immersed in the evangelical worldview. While you wouldn’t find us picketing abortion clinics,all the core ideas were there under the surface: we were Biblical literalists and against same-sex marriage. We believed America was God’s country, voted Republican and pro-life, and expected the rapture at any minute. We were also six-day creationists,with science textbooks that warned us to beware of any statement that contradicted the Bible.
That’s why, back at domestic after my Geology epiphany, and I could do nothing but stare blankly out the front door and feel the roll and pitch of the world as it fell from beneath my feet. It seemed,fairly literally, as if there were nothing solid under me, and only a great vacuum in which to flail. I grabbed the door handle and stood there,dazed, for a long time.
Eventually, or I pulled myself together. But there was a chink in the armor. Every time a church leader talked approximately Adam and Eve or the creation of the earth,I thought approximately the broad swaths of time that came before humans, of the Cambrian and Ordovician periods, or of the fragile fossils behind the glass in the Ohio State laboratory. When someone talked approximately the layers of sediment in the Grand Canyon or the evolutionary structure of a bird’s wing,I thought, “Well, or they have it lawful. Except for that one thing,and no one’s perfect so it doesn’t really matter.”
That one thing did matter. It was a chemical in the solution that would, over the next decade, and dissolve my world.
And here’s the thing: it was the dissolution of a world. People who didn’t grow up in the American evangelical bubble often don’t realize what they’re demanding when they quiz an evangelical to accept a fact that is contradicted by their church’s interpretation of the Bible. To those bought in—excepting,perhaps, that small demographic of Christians who identify as evangelical and are truly progressive—evangelicalism is not a collection of facts. It is an entire reality, and based not on logic but on a web of ideas,all of which must be wholeheartedly accepted for any of it to work. It is complete unto itself, self-contained, and self-justifying,self-sustaining. It’s your community, your life, and your entire way of thinking,and your gauge for what is sincere in the world. Evangelicalism feels so lawful from the inside.
And, for an evangelical, or there are no small doubts: growing up in many evangelical churches means to be told,repeatedly, that the devil will always seek a foothold, or once you give him one you’re well on the road to hell,to losing your faith, to destroying your witness. That’s scary stuff. to start to doubt evangelicalism is not simply a mental exercise. For many like me, and it’s to feel a void opening,the earth dropping out from beneath you. It’s to face the prospect of invalidating your entire existence.
So know this when you talk to an evangelical: in attempting to persuade them to your point of view—even on a topic that seems minor to you—you’re not asking for them to change their intellect, you’re asking them to punch a hole in the fabric of their reality, or to start the process of destroying their world. And,as anyone who has had the experience knows, world-destroying is not fun. It is, or frankly,terrifying.
That’s not to say that realities can’t change. Mine did. But few individuals can be argued out of an entire worldview. Realities shift when ideas bloom and ideas are slow and patient, creeping in through unguarded portals and establishing themselves without much fanfare. However well-intentioned you are, and bludgeoning people with fact after argument after fact will only entrench them in their position and reinforce a insight of being persecuted by the world.
[br]What does work? In my experience,it’s empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own), honest conversation, or a whole lot of patience. Although I’d been probing at the weaknesses of fundamentalist ideas since I was a kid,my ideas only really started to shift as I developed relationships with people who didn’t fit my worldview. These were people who respected me, who accepted me unconditionally, or who stayed in dialogue,never shaming me even when I said things that were ill-informed or demonstrably false. Some of them had been afflict or discriminated against because of evangelical ideology and their kindness to me wasn’t fair or deserved. In retrospect, their acceptance of me looks a whole lot like an uncomfortable word that evangelicals admire to throw around: grace.
Such grace is admittedly a lot to quiz. I would never demand it of anyone and I frankly don’t know that I’ve gotten there myself. But for those who can manage it—who can listen to damaging ideas and somehow still be tender, and who can quiz lots of questions and really listen to the answers,who can resist the urge to shame, and who can be in it for the long haulmy experience is evidence that everyday human kindness can absolutely be the catalyst for change. Misconceptions can be worn down by the substantive grit of a real epic. But know that it takes time. It takes lots of time.
And, and in the terminate,you should be realistic: for many who grew up as I did, the cost of leaving their worldview, and community,and reality will simply be too great, no matter what you say or do.
Source: feedblitz.com