How To Disagree

In this episode Randy and Kyle discuss disagreement, a current topic if there ever was one. Kyle did his PhD dissertation on the epistemology of disagreement, and this conversation explores what it is, some common pitfalls, how to do it better, and what it looks like for Christians in particular. For more of Kyle's thoughts on this, see here.

The beer featured in this episode is King Sue by Toppling Goliath Brewing Company.

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Transcript

Kyle: 0:00

Hi I'm Kyle.

Randy: 0:15

And I'm Randy. And this is A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar.

Elliot: 0:22

That was super friendly.

Randy: 0:23

Nice, good. Well we're so glad you joined us for this latest installment of A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar. Today, it's gonna feel like we are really walking into a bar together because we're going to do what you do with your friends at a bar, maybe even family at a bar, disagreeing. We're going to talk about disagreeing. And that happens really well over a couple of pints. And maybe, maybe one too many and it gets a little sloppy, but disagreement is something that is very common in this world, but what's very uncommon is disagreeing well. And that's something that our resident philosopher knows a thing or two about. Kyle, can you tell us your passion about this?

Kyle: 1:09

Sure. I actually wrote a dissertation about this. So I recently completed my doctorate in epistemology, which is the branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge, and there is a little in-house conversation, debate among epistemologists that's only about 15 years old or so about disagreement, believe it or not. You would think that philosophers would have been talking about this for thousands of years, but it's actually a really recent topic. So I've been thinking about disagreement, whether it's possible to have rational disagreements, for a little over two years, probably. And it's, unusually, it's one of the few areas where the sort of high level abstract philosophical research that I do actually has some pretty relevant practical implications.

Randy: 1:55

Researching disagreement for two years. Just take that in, dear listener. Let's just pray for Kyle's soul.

Elliot: 2:03

Okay, so this sounds really interesting, but you're supposed to have walked into a bar and my glass is still empty. So we need to get to that segment.

Kyle: 2:11

Fair point.

Randy: 2:12

Kyle, what are we drinking today?

Kyle: 2:14

Today we are drinking one of my favorite IPAs. Now, an IPA--India Pale Ale--there's all kinds of different forms of IPAs. This one would fall on the hazy side or you might call it a New England IPA, but it's actually made in Iowa by a brewery called Toppling Goliath.

Randy: 2:33

That just made me like it even more, Iowa, for crying out loud.

Kyle: 2:36

I know, right? Decorah, Iowa. There's nothing else there. There's two breweries and a little town and that's, and yes I have driven all the way there just for Toppling Goliath beer. In fact, I've camped out overnight in the winter for Toppling Goliath beer.

Randy: 2:50

Good grief Kyle.

Kyle: 2:51

Yes. So this beer is called King Sue. They have a very well known IPA called Pseudo Sue that sort of put them on the map. This is kind of a bigger version of that. So this is a double IPA, which means it's a little stronger, usually a little higher ABV, this one's 7.8%, 50 IBUs, which are bitterness units, which is actually pretty low. So for IPAs, you can go anywhere from 40 to 120 to well beyond that. There was a, there's a brewery called Mikkeller that in 2007, they made a beer with 2007 IBUs. I cannot imagine drinking something like that. So this won't...

Elliot: 3:29

How do you measure an IBU?

Kyle: 3:32

Chemistry that I don't understand.

Randy: 3:33

That sounds like...

Elliot: 3:34

Wild.

Randy: 3:34

... that sounds like a bunch of dried up, puckered up hipsters to me.

Kyle: 3:37

I cannot imagine drinking that, but this will actually be pretty light bitterness, which is one of the reasons I love it so much.

Randy: 3:42

So there's no fruit in this one? We don't have to roll this can or anything?

Kyle: 3:45

There's no fruit. This is, this is citra hops only, and it should surprise you, it has surprised me the previous times I've had this beer but it's been a while, it should surprise you how fruity it tastes without there being any fruit in it.

Randy: 3:57

Alright, sure, I like that.

Kyle: 3:58

Yeah.

Elliot: 4:01

So King Sue, it has to be a reference to Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex that's in the Chicago Field Museum, right? Is this like the same Sue we're talking about?

Kyle: 4:08

I never, I never put that together. There is a big Tyrannosaurus Rex on the can, so I bet you're right about that.

Randy: 4:16

All right, it is pretty light in color.

Kyle: 4:18

Hazy golden.

Randy: 4:21

Yeah. Wow, very hazy.

Kyle: 4:21

The nose is just super, super fruity. Take a whiff of that.

Elliot: 4:26

It's like smelling flowers.

Randy: 4:29

Yeah. Flowers with some banana and grapefruit to them.

Kyle: 4:34

Yep.

Randy: 4:35

Oh, man. Once you smell that grapefruit, you can't unsmell it. I'll bet if you were to find yourself diving into a big pool of King Sue and you had goggles on, you wouldn't be able to see the hand in front of your face. Holy moly is that hazy.

Kyle: 4:51

No, it's a nice cloudy beer.

Elliot: 4:53

Does that have to do with it being a double IPA? I don't know what the double part means.

Kyle: 4:56

No, it has to do with the way they hop it. Now, I'm not a brewer or an expert on this by any means, but the processes that you would put a West Coast IPA through to make it clear, they just don't do in this. And they hop it towards the end with dry hops. And somehow that makes it hazy. I don't know all the specifics of that. Brewers out there listening are probably cringing at the moment.

Randy: 5:19

Well I've got to tell you, this is freaking ridiculous. It's delicious.

Kyle: 5:24

It's really good. And the best thing about this beer is that you can get it at any decent liquor store. It's very widely avail... like three years ago it wasn't, but now, I got this at Woodman's, just off the shelf at Woodman's.

Randy: 5:37

I've never tasted an IPA like this. That's incredible. It's actually, the look of it mirrors the flavor and mouthfeel, because it's got a creamy essence to it almost, like a mouthfeel and like a flavor.

Kyle: 5:50

With, with no lactose. So there's a very common trend in hazy IPAs to add lactose, which is just milk sugar, to give it that kind of creaminess. This doesn't have that.

Randy: 5:58

That's incredible.

Kyle: 5:59

It's just, yeah, just that's citra hops.

Randy: 6:01

That's, that's like brewery genius. That's incredible that you can do that to a beer.

Kyle: 6:06

Yeah.

Randy: 6:06

Oh my goodness, I'm in love.

Elliot: 6:08

I was trying to pick out what, there was another flavor there that was like in the fruit family. I think pear is how I would label it, like it's, there's a...

Kyle: 6:17

The notes that they give in the description are mango, orange, and pineapple.

Randy: 6:21

Yeah, yep.

Elliot: 6:23

Oh, the pineapple for sure, now that you say that. Lovely. Yeah.

Randy: 6:27

Oh, man. All right, well...

Elliot: 6:28

This is a good round.

Randy: 6:29

What's the brewery?

Kyle: 6:31

Toppling Goliath.

Randy: 6:32

Toppling Goliath King Sue. If you are a fan at all of IPAs, grab one of these and hold on to your pants.

Elliot: 6:41

Yeah.

Randy: 6:41

Your butts, your chairs.

Kyle: 6:42

They also make some pretty, pretty stellar barrel aged stouts, which maybe we'll get into in a later episode.

Randy: 6:49

I hope not.

Elliot: 6:49

Works for me.

Randy: 6:52

You stout heads, I don't get you. But this is delicious. Thank you, Kyle. Thanks for buying.

Kyle: 6:57

Cheers.

Randy: 6:58

Cheers. So as we mentioned, today we're talking about how to disagree and how to do it well. That is particularly interesting to me, because we find ourselves in this moment, and I would say really, particularly within the last five years, even well into the Obama presidency, our nation just feels like we forgot how to disagree well. Our nation is so polarized, our nation is so separated and disunified, and we identify ourselves by what we're not, by and large, and we don't know how to have relationships with people who think differently than us, particularly politically, but also religiously, also ethnic and racially, also, just, you could just go down the line, socioeconomically, generationally. We just don't know how to engage with one another when there's differences, and when there's disagreement even, not just differences, but disagreement. And I think it's one of the, one of the things, you know, we talk about how our world is going to hell in a handbasket. First of all, I don't believe that. I think new creation is taking root more and more all the time. But when I think about one of the things that I could, if I could fix one or two things about our culture right now, it would be how to fix the polarization and the way that we just fill the airwaves and fill the air around us with hatred, judgmentalism, cynicism, and anger towards one another. So I think this is a extremely pertinent, extremely timely thing to talk about that I hope lots and lots of people listen to, not just so we can get popular, but that's so we can actually start listening to one another, so we can actually start respectfully engaging with one another, so we can actually start walking in the way of Jesus that many of us listening, probably, seem to say that we esteem so highly and that we love so much. So, with that being said, Kyle, can you just tell us why you got into this topic, why you got into this whole idea?

Kyle: 9:01

Well, some of what you just described is some of why I got into the topic, noticing the seemingly sharp increase in hostility and contempt between people that I loved and respected and even learned Christianity from, you know, some of whom would disown me because of views that I take that they view with hostility. So that was, part of why I got into it was wanting to figure out where do I stand on this, is it possible to actually have rational conversations with these people who I admire and respect and I really, really want to say that they have maintained their integrity, and I really want to say that they can remain reasonable, even while having an active disagreement with me. I want to say that that's possible, but I don't understand how it could be. And so that's how I got into studying this topic specifically. And also, frankly, I went to graduate school. And graduate school is just a really unique, in some ways, destructive, mentally and spiritually destructive, experience. And it, you're just constantly challenged, constantly forced to prove yourself. But the great thing about it is that you're surrounded by people who are A. way better informed than you, they're all experts in their fields, often much smarter than you--I met people in graduate school that make me feel like just an impostor sometimes--and also, they tend to, by and large, treat you with respect, they want you to develop your ability to defend the views that you hold. And they help you to do that by critiquing you. And it's, it's direct, often, sometimes it feels attacking, but more often than not, they're good people who want to develop your rational capacity. And that's, that forced me, being, just existing in that environment forced me to reckon with the fact that there are people who are as informed as I am or better, as smart as I am or smarter, and disagree with me. And I want to say we're all rational. So how can I explain that? That's what really triggered this topic.

Randy: 11:13

So when we talk about agreeing and disagreeing, it feels like we are being taught how to disagree with one another by social media and our interactions on social media. And also, we're in election season, and so I spent a lot of time watching the debates, because I didn't, didn't know who I wanted to vote for, and so we watched, and I watched with my daughter, even, my 12, now 13 year old daughter, and what I saw was shameful. To me, our politicians are reducing debating into shouting over one another and not stop talking so that the people can hear and I'm going to force the interviewers to, to honor my time and my space, because I just bully my way through it. And we're just talking back and forth, we're not listening to another, we're not actually having a real conversation. That reminds me of social media, even, the, the way we on Twitter and Facebook, just soapbox something so much and then react against that on the other side and either write them off--unfriend unfollow, right, that's easy--or we just slap a bunch of generalizations on their comments and think that that's disagreeing. So maybe Kyle, could you, could you tell us what's your idea even, what's a philosophical idea of what it means to disagree and have a disagreement?

Kyle: 12:35

Yeah, good. Yeah, to understand what's going wrong in those kinds of interactions, we need to sort of back up a little bit and first realize what it even means to have a disagreement in the first place, and then we can discuss in more detail how to have a good one. So philosophically speaking, a

disagreement is simply this: 12:50

it is one person takes a particular proposition to have a certain truth value, that another person takes that proposition to have a different truth value. Now to understand what that means you have to know what a proposition is. So a proposition is kind of philosophy speak for something that can be true or false, or you might just say an idea.

Randy: 13:14

Thank you for, thank you for not making me ask what a proposition is by the way, appreciate that?

Kyle: 13:18

Sure, sure. I mean, it's a fraught question even within philosophy, there are whole debates about what prepositions are. But if you and I are going to have a disagreement, there has to be some particular, identifiable idea, something that can be true or false, that you take a position on, and that I take a contradictory position on. You have to think it is the case that that proposition is true, and I have to think it is the case that that proposition is false, or perhaps unknowable, something like that. But if there isn't such an identifiable proposition, you and I are not having a disagreement. And often what happens in the sort of political and social media contexts that you describe, is people think they're having disagreements, and they get really passionate about these disagreements and the ideas that are being batted around, but they're not actually having disagreements, because if you were to ask them to, they would be unable to identify the specific proposition or set of propositions that is actually in conflict between them and their peers. So to even get to the stage of having a disagreement, you have to first identify what it is specifically that you and I are disagreeing about. And often this, this just doesn't happen. Let me give you an example that I use with my students. So I teach on a Jesuit Catholic campus. And often at this campus, at least once a semester, there will be picketers who come onto the campus and they stand around the quad, and they hold signs about abortion. And often these signs depict really graphic images of stuff you don't want to look at, and they'll also include phrases like "Human life is sacred" or"Human life is intrinsically valuable" or something like that. And sometimes you get counter protesters, you get people who come to campus and stand on the other side of the sidewalk or on the other side of the street, and they hold their own signs. And their signs say things like, "It is my choice what to do with my body,""Bodily autonomy is a right," something like that. And so let's say you have these groups of people holding their signs, and maybe they're even shouting these phrases at each other. You don't yet have a disagreement. Because it is very possible that everybody in that space agrees with everything that's being said. Who is going to, what reasonable person is going to deny that what happens to your body is up to you? What reasonable person is going to deny that human life is intrinsically valuable? Because they have, they think they're disagreeing, they're very passionate about the disagreement they're having, but they haven't identified the proposition. So this hasn't even gotten interesting yet from the perspective of philosophical disagreement. First, you have to locate, well specifically what is it that we are in conflict about? And sometimes you can have merely apparent disagreements, and you waste lots and lots of energy on those, and it's deeply unhealthy. And that's most of what I see in political debates. I gave up watching political debates years ago. I think the last one I watched was, from beginning to end, was the Sarah Palin one. And I just said, no, I can't do this anymore. There's no debating happening here, because there's no reason-giving. There's no proposition that's identified as being in tension, and then different reasons to take different positions on... none of that. It was cliche throwing, and posturing, and what can I say to get the audience to laugh and be on my side? That's, that's not disagreement.

Randy: 16:54

So as most of us live on social media, Kyle, and we, you know, surf our phones or our devices on the news and little sound bites and hear about what Trump said, or what Nancy Pelosi said, or what Joe Biden said, whatever that might be, we get all sorts of bad examples on how to disagree in a poor fashion. But we get numb to it because we see it so often. And it's just become normal. We think this is just, just the way you disagree. So can you point out some actual bad ways to disagree, common mistakes that are made, some examples of what is hurting our common dialogue?

Kyle: 17:36

Yeah, good. So in my experience, the main mistakes that are made in disagreeing with others come down to three things, the main sort of ways that you can go wrong in disagreeing. First, you can be dogmatic about your view. And what that means is you need your view to be true. So there's something that you need to be certain about, and you're psychologically and emotionally invested in the truth of that belief, such that questioning it costs too much for you to even go there.

Randy: 18:10

That's so much of religious disagreements it's not even funny, right there.

Kyle: 18:15

And not just religious, political, relational...

Randy: 18:18

Yep.

Kyle: 18:18

... even sometimes academic, I've witnessed this in the academy as well. You get so invested in your particular perspective that when counter evidence or counter perspectives are presented to you, you, you do one of two things: you shut down and flee, or you react with hostility. And this is the result of not being able to hold your beliefs with an open hand, not being able to consider that there might have been some information that you missed, and you might actually be mistaken about this. That is viewed as dangerous by the dogmatist. And that leads to all sorts of hostile and contemptuous reactions to others who disagree with you. It also leads to exclusionary communities where open inquiry and disagreement is not welcome in this space, because we have our values, we're certain about our values, we need to be certain about our values because of the importance that they hold in our communities, and so we just simply don't allow contrary voices. If they arise, we kick them out. We silence them. That's dogmatism. The opposite extreme is called relativism. So this is a, another way of going wrong in disagreement. In fact, it's a way of giving up on disagreement entirely. The relativist, in this context, is someone who thinks that everybody can be right. It's the, sort of the can't we all just get along approach to living in society with other people. The relativist thinks that being disagreed with--they actually agree with the dogmatist about this, interestingly--being disagreed with is an act of hostility. And because hostility is uncomfortable and we don't like it, the best way to solve that is to admit that everyone has their perspective, and everyone's perspective is equally valuable, and can be, you know, equally affirmed, and everybody can be right. And let's just all get along, which of course removes the need to actually have the disagreement, to present the reasons for and against positions.

Randy: 20:16

Now, that's interesting.

Kyle: 20:17

You just sort of give up on that.

Randy: 20:18

What's interesting to me is there's this new catchphrase, or this new statement that people make that sounds a lot like what you're talking about, and I'd be interested to get your take on it, I don't know if you even know what I'm about to say, but it's this idea that everyone has their own truth. Right, that, well, that's your truth. That's that person's truth. What do you think about that?

Kyle: 20:38

That's an old catchphrase. Yeah, that's been around a long time.

Randy: 20:40

Alright. It's new to me.

Kyle: 20:41

Yeah. I mean, it's nonsense. From a philosophical perspective, it's, it's literal nonsense, which means it has no meaning. It's, it's like saying, you know, the number seven is green. It expresses exactly as much semantic content as that nonsense sentence that I just said. If you understand what truth means from a philosophical perspective, it's just impossible that everyone has their own and that those all disagree. If there is such a thing as truth, it is one thing. This is one of the very few things that many philosophers can agree about. They don't all agree about what truth is, they don't all agree that there is such a thing, but they all agree that, almost all of them anyway, agree that if there is such a thing, contradictory positions cannot both attain it. This is basic logic.

Randy: 21:29

Okay.

Kyle: 21:29

So that catchphrase is just kind of silly. Now, to be fair to these people, what, what they probably mean by that--they probably haven't had critical thinking or logic courses, although they all should, plug for teaching logic in high school--what they probably mean is not that everyone can have their own position and their own truth and be right. They probably mean something like this: they're probably making a moral claim, you should respect the opinions of others. You should respect the posit... you should be tolerant; you should not be disrespectful or judgmental. That's probably what they mean. And we can definitely find something to affirm in that. But taking that to the extreme that the relativist takes it to, which is to say that either there is no truth, or there are multiple versions of the truth and that contradictions don't matter, well, that's just cognitive suicide.

Randy: 22:20

I like it, cognitive suicide. We need a sound effect. So that's two of three, Kyle.

Kyle: 22:30

The third, which is related to both, is judgmentalism. We categorize people before hearing their reasons, before hearing their perspectives. I see that you, you know, on social media or whatever, I see that you believe X about issue Y, and I immediately lump you into, oh, you're one of those, and now, I'm not open to have, you know, a free exchange of ideas or reasons with you anymore, because I've pre-determined what my opinion about you and your view is. That's judgmentalism, and it absolutely shuts down conversation. It's often a moral evaluation of another person. You are, I'm now suspicious of your motives, I'm suspicious of your capacity to reason objectively, and so I'm just not going to engage, even if you make a brilliant argument, I'm not going to engage with it, because I've pre-judged you. This absolutely destroys the possibility of any kind of productive disagreement.

Randy: 23:30

This is like ninja level social commentary right here. I mean, you just, you just like explained all of what I see on social media in a little nutshell there. So that's the, that's the crappy way to go. That's, that's the pitfalls that we find when, when engaging with one another in disagreement. What's, what's the ideal?

Kyle: 23:52

Yeah. Well, philosophy to the rescue here. The ideal, I think, is best expressed in ancient Athens, it's probably expressed in many other ways in many different parts of the world as well, but in the beginnings of Greek philosophy, we get this idea in Socrates and Plato, that disagreement is the best thing that can happen to you. That it's something desirable, that it's something, it's actually the highest form of life. Seeking a critical context in which your ideas are challenged is the best thing you can do. It's the best kind of human life you can have. It's the life of contemplation.

Randy: 24:32

And that right there is why so many college freshmen say I want nothing to do with philosophy.

Kyle: 24:37

They check right out. Actually, you know, believe it or not, my students are quite receptive to this idea; they, they find it interesting, maybe because they're fed up with the kinds of pseudo-disagreements they see from their elders, I don't know. But they're actually pretty into this idea. The idea that you can actually embrace challenge and that your, your faith, and not just your faith, but I mean any of your beliefs, can actually withstand scrutiny, that it can be something you can actually put a lot of weight on, is often quite attractive to many of my intro philosophy students. It was very attractive to me when I went to college and had a lot of my beliefs shaken. So in Socrates, you see this, this really open, really honest embrace of critique. Socrates says something along the lines of be my friend, and because you're my friend, refute me, show me where I'm wrong, because I want to better myself. And I'll do the same for you. This is the dialogue format that, that you get in Platonic philosophy. And then later on, in the more modern philosophical tradition, you have a British philosopher named John Stuart Mill, and he's, he says, sort of extends this thought, and says, if I'm going to be sure of any of my beliefs at all, if any of my beliefs are going to meet the level of justification, where I can be confident about them, and ensure that I'm holding them in the right way, if that's going to be possible at all, I have to seek out, actively, disagreement. I have to put myself in a social situation where I'm regularly critiqued, and not by just laypeople, I'm regularly critiqued by the best representatives of contrary views. People who sincerely, passionately hold views that I find false, or maybe even reprehensible. I have to seek those people out and invite their critique about my own views, or my own views aren't justified. This is Mill's view. And somewhere in here, I think, is the solution or the, the antidote to the kinds of problems I described a moment ago. You have to, you have to learn to see disagreement as a healthy thing, as a good thing, as something that is not necessarily hostile. So there was a, I think it was Barna, or one of, maybe it was Pew, one of those big polling organizations, a couple of years ago, did a poll, and they found that millennials tend to view disagreement, someone expressing disagreement, as hostile, more so than previous generations even did. And this is dangerous. We have to somehow figure out a way to teach our youth that, to model for them really, not just teach it, but model it, that disagreement can be healthy and constructive and friendly, that it can actually be a kind thing to do for a friend.

Randy: 27:34

I mean, that sounds good. But is it because I've never, or I so rarely see disagreement modeled well, that I can say, disagreement is a kind thing to a friend, or how much can you, how much is it humanly possible for a person to detach their emotions to a certain, to such an extent to where you can receive that kind of critique, critique and criticism or disagreement and still feel grounded as a person and not attacked or belittled or, you know, you're, I'm not sold on that, that, that kind, disagreeing with a person is the kindest thing you can do.

Kyle: 28:12

So a couple things. One, you'll notice, I did not say anything about detaching from one's emotions. So part of learning to disagree well--and this takes practice, trial and error--you have to learn to control your emotions, but the best arguments are arguments that are passionate, that are emotional, they just shepherd those emotions well. So that there's, there is, I'll grant you this, there is an old tradition in philosophy, goes all the way back to the Greeks, very prominent in the modern period, of viewing emotions as something dangerous, something that is inherently irrational, and that, to have the best kind of human life you need to learn to suppress those, so that you can be purely rational. That was certainly Plato's view. But since then, there have been some really productive movements within philosophy, most prominently by feminist philosophers and other minority philosophers, who have pointed out the danger of that and given us a corrective. It's, you don't have to actually demarcate your reason from your emotions and then split yourself like that, because that's not how humans actually work. We experienced these things as one thing. I am, being a human means I am rational; it also means I'm emotional. I feel and think simultaneously, and these are one experience. So I do not advocate trying to, you know, privilege one over the other. What I do advocate is trying to do both responsibly. And you can learn to do this. There are virtues of the mind, there are virtues of the emotion, and you can practice these virtues and become good at being passionate, being emotional, but in a controlled way. Sometimes anger is the most rational response to the position that someone else has just taken. And it is possible--not easy--but it's possible to express that anger while also respecting the other person. You can be angry at them--so I'm going to borrow a distinction here that I heard from someone else, a guy named Arthur Brooks--he draws this distinction between being angry and being contemptuous. To hold someone in contempt is to view them as worthless, not worthy of your respect. But you can be angry at them and still value their perspective, still, still value them as a human being--if you're a Christian, value them as someone who bears the image of God--and express your anger as you would express it to someone who you value. Anger is not, is not incompatible with respect; it's not incompatible with kindness. Contempt is. Viewing someone as worthless, that's what we have to train ourselves to avoid.

Elliot: 30:59

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Randy: 31:39

So this sounds, this sounds all great, Kyle, and I like the distinctions, I particularly like the bad ways of disagreeing and the three realms of faulty ways of engaging and disagreeing, but how does this look between you and your wife? Right, I, I sat at a cafe table with you and Emily and did premarital counseling with you guys, and pretended that I was the expert at it, and I officiated your wedding. Now, Kyle the husband who, you know, letters behind his name doesn't mean a whole lot, a whole lot when you walk through that door, what does disagreeing well look like on an intimate personal level?

Kyle: 32:21

Yeah, it's much, much harder. So this is not in my dissertation, so I don't have any particular expertise about intimate relationship dynamics or anything like that. But what I can say is that the stakes in intimate relationships are much, much higher than they are in workplace disagreements or academic disagreements or the sorts of disagreements you might have on social media with friends or strangers. It's very, very important--and this is important across the board, but even more so in intimate context--very important to first understand why someone holds the position that they hold before trying to have the argument. The argument still has to be had, in my experience. Brushing it under the rug is not going to help anyone. But understanding the psychological work that someone's view is doing for them, why they hold the view, why it's important to them, why they place as much weight on it as they do, that is crucial. It's a necessary step to having successful disagreements. That's always true, but it's especially true...

Randy: 33:27

In other words, empathy.

Kyle: 33:29

Empathy is an aspect of it, but this is something that can be achieved even by people who have a difficulty with empathy. So for example, I think sociopaths could still have successful disagreements, if they adopt certain kind of methodological stances.

Randy: 33:46

There's hope for Dexter.

Kyle: 33:49

Indeed. So yeah, so just give you a little example, not about my wife, about someone else. So I was in a home church, a little, small group of Christians who met together once a week in our homes. And there was a, another person in this home church who was very sweet, very kind, just really genuinely good person. But they believed something that I did not believe, and this came up in one of our, one of our meetings, something about evolution, I think it was, and sort of unthinkingly, when this came up, I just kind of steamrolled this person, just, you know, said all the reasons that I thought this particular view was dumb, why this other view was obviously better, didn't really think much of it. And then a couple of weeks later, I find out that this seriously shook this person's faith. They kind of had a faith structure so that everything was kind of precariously placed, leaning on everything else, each little component of it needed to be there--you might call this like a house of cards kind of structure of faith--but there were some really good psychological reasons having to do with this person's past that they held this view. And it was a view that I didn't place any weight on at all; I was years removed from thinking this was even an important view. But because I didn't take the time to do the kind of investigative work of really getting to know that person prior to having the disagreement, I could have done some serious damage. Fortunately, it worked out. This person was forgiving; I was able to apologize and explain a little more in depth my perspective, and it was all okay. But it could have been much worse, and it often is much worse. So you have to first, prior to critiquing a view, find out why it's there. And connected to that, make sure you understand it, make sure you really get the full picture of the reasons this person has. One great tool, by the way, one great test, if you're not sure how to do that, it's very

simple: 35:49

repeat the person's view back to them and say, is that your view? And they will say yes or no. And if it's not, you need to listen more.

Randy: 35:59

That's good. That actually can be used in marriage as well, that technique. Now, as we think of ourselves, hopefully we think of ourselves as Christ-followers, and Jesus seemed to have an awful lot to say about what it means to be his follower, and there wasn't a whole lot about being right or even truth, right? I mean, when he said, when he talked about truth, he pointed to himself as the truth, a person is the truth. But what he did talk a lot, an awful lot, is how people around you are going to notice that you're my followers is by the way you love one another. And he talked even a lot about unity within disagreement, because unity actually means that we're together even if we don't agree with one another. So as a philosopher who also happens to be a Christian, and a Christ-follower, Kyle, is one nagging, is one kind of competing with the other, this value of agape love that prefers the other unconditionally, but also is seeking the truth. Are those in competition with one another? How does that work?

Kyle: 37:10

Yeah. This is a hard question. I'd like to say they're never in competition. I've had a running disagreement with a good friend of mine, another philosopher, about this specific question. I think sometimes they can be in tension, the truth and love. But I need to make a distinction here between two senses of that tension. So we can talk about there being a tension in a metaphysical sense, which means the way the world fundamentally is, like inherent in it, there's some kind of tension. And in that sense, I don't think that there is a tension between truth and love because as a Christian, I believe that the truth and love are metaphysically the same thing. Now, that's very complicated, and we could have a longer conversation about that, but that is not the sense of tension that I mean. Another sense of tension is there's a kind of epistemic or epistemological tension, which means with respect to what we can know about the world, there might in fact be a tension or, or what we can establish maybe, or convince others of about the world. In that sense, there might actually be a tension between truth as a value and love as a value. Sometimes in practice, those things do come into conflict. Philosophy, in the Greek tradition, at least, is all about the truth. I mean, it's all about wisdom, the word literally means the love of wisdom. And that means finding out, one, what the world is like, and two, how do I live in it? What should I do? What am I, and what should I do? We want to know what reality is. Truth is the whole thing. And love, when it comes up, which is not that often, is secondary, or it's talked about in a kind of romantic way or an erotic way or something like that. The Christian emphasis on agape love, which is this kind of self-sacrificial, other-oriented, extended even to enemies, that kind of love, the kind of love that God has for us, the kind of love that's exhibited by Jesus on the cross, that doesn't really appear in philosophy very much unless it is philosophy done by and motivated by Christians. And I've thought for a long time, even wrote a paper about this, about what it means to be a Christian philosopher, and it's something that kinda keeps me up at night, I'm still a little bit torn on it. But I have to say at the end of the day, if the two are in conflict, I have to privilege love. I have to value the person in front of me over coming to agreement about the truth, or even over the truth being honored. And that sounds really bad, but in practice, fortunately, it's usually not that bad. I think, I think there's a, there's a hypothetical space in which those, that tension could be really pronounced, but in practice, thank God, most of the time these things go together. And in fact, most of the time when I approach someone in love, and I value them more than agreeing, more than being right, it actually ends up helping the truth to be discovered, or at least helping us make progress towards it together, because it kind of undercuts the hostility. It undercuts the contemptuousness that is the real roadblock to coming to the truth. If I can gain the trust of the other person by demonstrating that I love them, then the truth becomes much more likely. And that is a very good thing. Otherwise, it would be even more difficult for me to reconcile the philosophical part of me and the Christian part of me.

Randy: 40:37

Yep, absolutely. So I asked you, what are bad ways to disagree and what are, what's behind those bad ways. What does it look like to disagree well?

Kyle: 40:49

Yeah. Well fortunately, I've had lots of great models of this my whole life. I don't know, I've just been really lucky to have good spiritual advisors, yourself included, who model for me a sort of humble way to approach people, even while disagreeing with them. And so I've been lucky and fortunate to see a lot of people doing it well. And then through studying it, I've also come across several sort of general methods or general approaches that you can take to doing it well across the board that don't always come naturally to everyone. So part of it is, as I said before, becoming comfortable being challenged, reaching a place of personal maturity where someone challenging your belief, you don't take that as devaluing you as a person, you take it as actually an honoring thing, because they care about you and your view enough to engage with it. But the most important thing is to develop a kind of intellectual humility, to recognize that you are finite, you are limited. The, even if you're an expert, the amount that you can know about any issue is very, very small. The little niche part of the world that you have insight into is miniscule, and you're going to encounter people who know more than you, you're going to encounter people who have thought about something longer than you have, and you have to approach your own beliefs and the beliefs of others with some humility, with the ability to admit that maybe I don't know this. I can be confident about it, confident enough to act on it, but I'm not certain. And maybe in some circumstances, it's not even appropriate for me to say that I know that this is true. And that's okay. So developing some intellectual humility is really the key to having successful disagreements. Because if you don't have that, if you're certain that you're right, then you're never going to engage with someone else, because you won't value their view. And this entails that you have to be able to admit when you don't know something, you have to be able to say, I'm ignorant. This was actually the beginning of philosophy in the Western tradition. Socrates said, look, wisdom is simply admitting that you don't know. It's, the opposite of wisdom is pretense, pretending that you know what you don't know. All legitimate inquiry, science itself, doesn't get off the ground until you can admit that you don't know something, until you can be genuinely curious about the way the world is and admit that you don't know the way the world is, so that you can then investigate it openly. That's the key to the whole thing. If you can't admit that you're wrong, there's really no chance for successful disagreement.

Randy: 43:37

Now that right there, those three words, I don't know, strike me as remarkably rare in the world we live in today, on a number of levels, right. But I don't know, that sounds like just a forgotten tool to me.

Kyle: 43:55

Yeah. In some, in some contexts it's not even allowed. I mean, imagine you worked in a corporate context and you were in a meeting, and your boss asks you a question, and you don't know the answer, and you're tempted to say the responsible thing, which is that, you know, I don't have enough evidence about that right now; maybe I can look into it and get back to you, but right now, I don't know. Often, that's just not a welcome response. That's not an okay thing to say. It's the most responsible thing to say. But it's not an okay thing to say. And you could run into serious trouble about that. This is a deeply unhealthy way to proceed. And it's pervaded our culture.

Randy: 44:32

Yeah. Yeah. As a pastor, I have no idea what you're talking about. It's dangerous to say "I don't know."

Kyle: 44:42

That must be particularly difficult for you. I mean, because people put a lot of stock in what you say; you in some ways represent God to them. So admitting ignorance about God, I would imagine would be particularly fraught for you.

Randy: 44:57

Yeah, I think probably because of what's been modeled, you know, for me, for other spiritual leaders, which is we're not talking about faith, we're talking about certainty. Faith has been taken out of the equation, and we have to pretend that we're certain about something. And so that's just become a culture within our faith tradition, honestly, particularly within evangelicalism, but I think probably within many religious traditions, and it's just expected, and yeah, that's a lot of pressure. I mean, I've spent years of my young ministry years practicing actually answering certain questions, and, and then kicking myself when I didn't word it right, or say it right or, or appear that I, that I have it all figured out or whatever. That stuff, that's the stuff that kept me up at night. And it just got to a point where I saw a lot of beauty and humility and things being unlocked when I would say, I'm not sure, or I haven't landed there yet, or I don't know, that's a, like, those three words are very discipling words, the way I see it now, that you can have a faith leader who has put a lot of time and, and effort and research into what he's talking about, or she's talking about, and to still come to a question and say I don't know makes a lot of space for, for humility. But it challenges some people too; some people will walk away because they have a pastor who said I don't know about something that's really important to them. That's dangerous in some circles.

Kyle: 46:26

Yeah, absolutely. That's so, so important.

Elliot: 46:28

As I'm listening to you both talk about this, in the context of disagreeing well, if I'm disagreeing with somebody who's able to say "I don't know," even if I know that they can say "I don't know" about something, that gives me such a better platform of respect and conversation that, I appreciate that, and so in the conflict, then, I would much rather talk with a person who can say they don't know, even if they actually are going to have, have an opinion or something that I might disagree with in the midst of not knowing. That's, that's refreshing.

Kyle: 47:06

It changes the whole, like, energy dynamic of the conversation. My wife and I read a book by Rob Bell and his wife called The Zimzum of Love, and there was this concept that he used...

Randy: 47:17

He's good at titles.

Kyle: 47:18

I know. It was this concept that he borrowed of, like the energy that exists between people, and you can kind of tell when that energy is off, and just something as simple as admitting your ignorance, saying, I'm really not sure about this, I'll, you know, share with you my view, but, but I'm not certain--that can just totally change the dynamics and allows people to be more honest and more open, makes it easier to forgive each other and to love each other well in that context, it's super important. Randy, you were saying about that, you felt this responsibility to have the answer ready, and then sort of kicked yourself when you didn't. I think you and I both have had some not so great experiences with evangelical apologetics. And maybe eventually we'll have a separate episode on that. I've intended for years to write a book on all the problems with apologetics culture. And the main one, and I was personally harmed by this, the main one is it's like hostile to humility. I mean, it trains, we very specifically train people to have a ready answer whether or not we fully understood the view that we're answering. We're supposed to have a ready answer for what people say so that we can demonstrate the rational superiority of our view. This is not compatible with intellectual humility.

Randy: 48:34

Yeah, I mean, I would say, the idea of certainty, or always being right, or having a handle and a firm grasp on who God is, and that being a static reality, that I've got it and I've got God, that in many ways could be our modern Tower of Babel, you know, that we, we think we've ascended to this place of understanding God. And I wonder if, what God's gonna do to confuse us, to create a little bit more humility and wonder as well.

Kyle: 49:05

Yeah. It's interesting that you mention wonder. I don't know if you know this, but another famous quote of Socrates is that philosophy begins in wonder. It's literally looking at the world and being genuinely curious at how it all works, how it all fits together. This is the birth of science, this is the birth of ethics, this is the birth of metaphysics, in some ways, it's the birth of critical religion. We just wonder what the world is like. It's sort of this innate human curiosity that every kid has, and you have to suppress it out of them, or it'll stay there. That's the beginning of philosophy; that's what the whole thing's about.

Randy: 49:46

I love it. And I mean, I feel like you can spot a person who is acquainted with wonder from a mile away, right? I mean, because those are the kind of people who just can't stop asking questions about you and your world. Those are the people who are just genuinely excited about who you are, what's your, what you're doing, what you're excited about. That kind of person is just irresistible to be around, rather than that douchey person who loves talking about themselves and loves talking about their ideas and their opinions and can't, can't, is always carrying their soapbox around--now I'm so, I'm describing myself in many ways. But that wonder that Socrates, you're referencing from Socrates, and that wonder that I think is missing from a lot of our modern religious world, I just, it's, right now, it's like a drug to me. Like, I just can't get enough of it. I can't talk about wonder enough, because it's, there's such a vacuum of it in the religious world that I live in.

Kyle: 50:46

Yeah. And when you're motivated by that, by wonder, by genuine curiosity, there's no disappointing answer. I mean, there's no, there's no place the investigation can go that won't be thrilling.

Randy: 50:58

Yes.

Kyle: 50:59

Because you don't have a predetermined agenda that you're trying to fill out the details of; you just want to know.

Randy: 51:04

That's good.

Kyle: 51:04

There's something very, I feel like, divine about that, something maybe even part of the Imago Dei, is we, we want to understand, and that's a good thing.

Randy: 51:13

That's good. Yep. So speaking of religion, God, spirituality, you know, we were talking earlier about political disagreements and how that's kind of filling the air in our culture. When you talk about disagreeing about God, right, I've, I've, I've had, some of my most painful disagreements have been over views of God, or ways that I live or don't live based, because of certain people's expectations and all that. It just takes on a different layer, a different dimension, a different weight to it. Can you talk to us about how to disagree about God well?

Kyle: 51:50

Yeah, good. Well, so first, there are some general tips that work for all disagreements, and therefore they also work for disagreements about religion and about God. We already discussed being, you gotta be humble, you got to approach the issue with humility, you got to be able to admit when you're wrong, you got to be willing to listen, try to understand the other perspective first. Again, repeat it back to the other person to make sure that you've understood it. Approach someone as though you can learn from them rather than just having things to teach them. Explicitly affirm the other person, has to be explicit, and it's not good enough that you believe that the other person is valuable, you have to tell them that they're valuable. This even works in social media disagreements I've found. I just say the words "You are more important to me than this disagreement." And that, again, changes the dynamic of the whole thing. But you're right, disagreeing about God is special, because it's, the stakes involved are so much higher. For religious people, their beliefs about God are the core of who they are, they're the most important things, usually. And for that reason, many religious people are simply unwilling to engage, they're dogmatic about their religious beliefs. In fact, the word dogma sometimes just means religious belief. And so there's simply unwilling to engage because of the stakes. If, if it turns out I'm wrong about this, there goes the world. There goes everything, right, everything that's important to me. And this is dangerous, this gives you a really shallow faith, a faith that can't withstand scrutiny, a faith that probably can't withstand the things that life is going to throw at you, just because you're human. So in my view, the best way to have a disagreement about God is to focus a little bit less on the object of the disagreement, the specific thing you're disagreeing about, and a little bit more on how you're doing the disagreement, or the method of the disagreement. So if you're a Christian--we're Christians, most of our listeners are probably Christians--disagreeing about God is not just disagreeing about the Christian God as an idea; it is learning to disagree in a Christian way. How can we, how can we make our method of disagreement Christian? How can we disagree like Jesus would disagree, or like the Holy Spirit would have us disagree? And when we frame it in that way, the question takes on a different, I don't know, a different tinge, it becomes a little bit easier to discuss what that might look like, because we know, hopefully, what's distinctive to Christianity. I mean, we know what Christianity is about. It's, it's about things like agape love, and grace, graciousness, and mercy and being incarnational, you know, giving, giving up our power for the sake of the goodness of another person. And so when I, when I approach someone I'm disagreeing with with all those values in mind--I'm honoring them as an image bearer of the Divine, as something of unsurpassable worth, as something that I have a duty of agape love towards--it changes the whole dynamic of the disagreement. So I'm a little less interested in how to disagree about God than I am in how to disagree like God, like, like the person of Jesus would, would have me do. And now practically, what does that mean, concretely? It might mean giving up on winning. It might mean being willing to let this disagreement just continue for a while. It might mean helping the other person make their point. They might be having difficulty expressing it, they might be getting heated or frustrated--care for them in that moment, help them to flesh out their own view before trying to correct it. It might mean letting them have the last word, all that stuff.

Randy: 55:40

Yep. So I'm sure there's some listeners who are maybe in the midst of a major disagreement that's causing disruption, or we've been in this before, and you get to that point where you're, you feel certain that you're right, and almost like it's injustice to let this go wrong and to let this settle because you're wrong.

Kyle: 56:03

Yeah.

Randy: 56:05

What do you do then?

Kyle: 56:06

Couple things. It rarely is actually injustice. I know it feels that way very often. But that is very rarely the case. And when it is the case, it's usually pretty obvious. But more importantly even than that is you're not certain. You're just not going to have a successful disagreement until you realize that certainty is a cancer. Certainty is not attainable by humans about anything, about God, about science, about politics, even about perceptual beliefs, like there, certainty is simply not attainable. You have to come to terms with that and be okay with beliefs that are fallible, beliefs that are maybe a bit more probabilistic. It's not to say you can't be confident, it's not to say you can't act on beliefs with some surety, but you're never certain. Certainty is the enemy of faith.

Randy: 57:00

So certainty is the enemy of faith. I agree with that. But here's, in my world, I've got some people that I really, I'll even go into an engagement with a certain person, or certain, or certain few people, and think about what I'm willing or not willing to share, because I don't want to stir something up, right. And most of, mostly those people are pretty fundamentalist Christians who have this view of the Bible, but the Bible in particular seems to be a tipping point for, for disagreements and for ways that we disagree, where they have this view that if there's a contradiction in the Bible, or if, if there's a human element to the Bible that wasn't maybe 100% inspired, right, far be it from me to say that, that the whole thing then falls apart. And so I know that as I'm talking to this person, that I can bring all the data and all the reason and all the, all the logic that I can, but they will never be able to say yes, you might be right, or man, I gotta think about that, or wow, that's, that's really interesting, because if they say that, the faith that they've built completely falls apart like a house of cards. How do you actually engage with a person like that? Is it possible to?

Kyle: 58:18

Yeah. I think it is possible usually. Now, I'm enough of a realist to say there are probably situations where people are just unwilling to let go of their dogmatism, maybe there's good psychological reasons for that, and probably engagement after a certain point with some people is probably not possible. And as a human with limited time, and limited energy, and limited ability to engage with everybody, sometimes you have to make a sort of cost-benefit decision and decide who's, who's best worth your time. But what I found to be most successful with dealing with people like this, extreme dogmatists, is to just bracket the issue we disagree about altogether for a while, and just be really, really nice. So I had a, I had a friend in college who, I used to have a blog, and it was a blog about faith and religion and God and stuff, and he would regularly comment just really hostile things on this blog, call me names, called me a fascist, all these things. And sometimes he'd do so in public too. And I just decided that the best way to approach this was to try to get to know him. And so the next time he called me a name, I invited him to lunch. And he accepted. He probably thought we were gonna hash it out. And so we got to the cafeteria and we got our food and he sat down and he started to launch into things and I said, let's just, I'm not, I don't really wanna do that right now, let's, let's just get to know each other a little better, if that's okay. And we had a series of meals together like this, and eventually he would, he would go around campus saying, man, those Christians, they're all so stupid, I hate them, they're so full of themselves, they have no idea what they're talking about... except that one guy. That one guy, he's okay, but the rest of them... So I was able to gain his trust, and then eventually we had some fairly productive conversations about God and about faith, which would never have happened if he viewed me as someone suspicious, someone that he couldn't trust. Sometimes that works. I think it's the best chance any of us have. It's not foolproof. It probably won't always work, again, because of how much importance we put on these particular kinds of beliefs. But again, if you can't get past the need for certainty, you're simply not going to have a healthy faith.

Randy: 1:00:40

Yep. Yep. That's good.

Kyle: 1:00:43

So, Randy, I'm curious about something from your own experience with disagreement. You are a pastor of a moderately sized church. The church is elder-led, which means there's a team of people that you're sort of at the same level, I guess, authoritatively speaking, is that accurate?

Randy: 1:00:59

Not a team of old people, but yes, elder, elder-led, yes.

Kyle: 1:01:02

Yeah, right, not, yeah, good. So like, the decision-making power is distributed among this group of people. And I would assume there's often disagreement between, I know all of you, so I know there's disagreement often between you about some probably pretty important stuff. What's been your experience with navigating disagreement in the context of that kind of church structure?

Randy: 1:01:23

It's a great question. I mean, I think, for me, it's all about what kind of culture you set. Are you setting a culture in which the loudest voice in the room usually gets their way, or a culture in which you're, you're always suspect of one another, or are you establishing a culture, an underlying foundation, of love for one another that's prioritized over and above this thing that we're doing or even this disagreement that we're having, right? And so what, we've established a culture that prioritizes loving one another, that prioritizes relationship with one another, in such a way that we rarely, and I really mean this, this sounds, this sounds, I'm sure this sounds weird to people, particularly people who have been on church leadership teams or elder teams, we rarely vote on anything, ever. I think, I think I could count on one hand the time we act, times we've actually voted on something within the last five to six years. And I'm not exaggerating, and that's mostly because we disagree with one another and honor one another within that, and we'll walk, we'll air that out until we get to a point where we can say, okay, I think that's best. Or even some of us can get to a point and say, I still disagree, but I see your point, and I'm going to prefer the group, or prefer you, and just, so we rarely ever get to a point where we have a vote, which I think speaks to that culture that we've established. And you've got to be willing to be wrong, you got to be willing to trust one another. And something that really has helped, actually, in the way that I've engaged with our leaders is the Enneagram. I know that you're, you're a little bit cynical about a couple of things, Kyle, and one of those would be the Enneagram. But we did, last year, last June, we did an Enneagram assessment, and then a spiritual director came in and did an Enneagram workshop with us where he went through all the numbers, and we got to hear, after we did our assessments, who's what number, and then the spiritual director talked about the strongsuits and the weaknesses of those numbers. And it got me to understand the people that I'm leading with so much more, whereas for a long time, whenever we'd be ready to make a decision, I'm ready to go, I'm ready to, I'm the guy who's wanting to go and just like, forget about what people think, because this is just the best way, let's go, let's move, we move too slow as a church. But then there's this other guy in the room who's constantly saying, well, what are people going to think about this? What's the congregation going to, how's the congregation gonna respond? And I always saw that as weakness in him, I usually saw that as why are you so afraid of people, right? And so in my heart, I would judge him and I would, you know, condescend and come down to, you know, okay, let's answer him if he needs to have this. But once we did the Enneagram, I learned that he's a nine on the Enneagram, which means that you're, you want to maintain peace as much as humanly possible. You're a peaceful person, you love peace, you love making peace, you're a peacemaker. And that's beautiful in many ways. And it all of a sudden, it just helped me realize I actually don't care at all about what people think, I don't care about maintaining the peace. I'm an eight, I, I challenge things and I don't care about it, as a matter of fact, I thrive when I challenge things. So it actually would help me to listen to this other person who cares about maintaining the peace, because I might actually destroy relationships along the way if I don't listen. So that's just a little example of knowing one another, preferring one another, actually helps us disagree in a way that we know that nobody is going to not come back next week. Nobody's going to take their, their toys and go home. Nobody's gonna be so broken over this that we're gonna break relationship because we care about one another more than we care about this thing that we're leading. And that's something that we've established from the very beginning is, this is an important value to us and to our culture, you and I and our relationship is more important than this organization that we're leading. And that sounds crazy, it sounds like antithetical to good leadership, but we've actually, that's the, I think that's the way you create a culture in which disagreeing becomes safe, then.

Kyle: 1:05:30

Yeah, yeah. It's so good, preferring others, isn't there something in the Bible about that? Consider others more highly than yourself?

Randy: 1:05:37

Maybe, maybe somewhere.

Kyle: 1:05:38

I feel like that's in there somewhere, I don't know. Yeah, that's, that's good stuff. And, actually, to the people that think that sounds kind of weak, making that commitment to prefer each other above the disagreement we're having actually, in my experience, does not make the disagreement less effective. In fact, it tends to make it more effective, because it encourages, it makes the person feel trusted and valued, and makes you more motivated to reach a kind of resolution, or to get things done. At least that's been my experience. So it's not, to prefer someone else is not to give up on solving the problem; it actually makes solving the problem more likely.

Randy: 1:06:19

That's good. Here's why I think this is so important, particularly for us Jesus followers, but for, for also the atheists who are listening, or people of different faiths, who we're so glad to have you journeying along with us, I mean, really, you make us better and, in brilliant ways. But here's why, for me, this is so important, because we have Jesus who's praying for the church, he's praying for the, for us, for those who are going to come after the disciples, and he asks the Father for one thing, he asks the Father for, for this one thing for the church, that, if I could have anything for the church, this is in the Jesus high priestly prayer in the book of John, if I could have anything for the church, Father, would you bless them with this beautiful gift that's called the unity? Not truth. Not being right. Not good dogma and good theology. Right? Not, not knowing the theology and the doctrine of the Trinity perfectly inside and out. Not the right denomination, but unity. How many of us would actually say if we could ask for one thing out of the church and see one thing in the church happen that's the highest priority, how many of us would say unity would be number one? And see, here's the thing, we see unity as being all of us are agreeing, are agreeing together. This is why we see churches that are 98% white or 97% black or Latino. This is why we see churches that are just Calvinist or Armenian or open theology. This is why we see churches who are, who believe in one way about baptism and not another way. It's because we think unity means agreeing with one another. And that's why we're just completely incapable, many of us, in many ways, of sitting in the same room with a person who fundamentally disagrees with us about something that's important to us but choosing the way of love in that moment, choosing to see them as a person, not an idea, not as a disagreement, not as a soapbox, but just as this beautiful person who's created in the image of God. What would the church look like if we could have that? What would our society and culture look like if we could value unity above being right, unity above proving my point, unity above looking good, right? So much, as we began this episode, so much of our world is right there, could be, could be just made so much more beautiful, elevated, and just so much more enjoyable if we could actually figure out what unity among my neighbors looks like, unity in my home, unity in my family, not agreement, not being right, but actually choosing one another and choosing to be with one another, choosing solidarity over disruption and exclusion, choosing inclusion in the midst of disagreements. This is an important conversation. So thank you, Kyle, for leading us in it. You passed. You got your PhD. Congratulations, Doctor. Well done.

Kyle: 1:09:23

Thanks Randy. I don't know how to respond to that.

Elliot: 1:09:30

Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this conversation. You can find us on social media. Like and share, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you're inclined to leave a review, we read through all of those and we love the feedback. Til next time, this has been A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar.