Crossing the Divide
Crossing the Divide
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers… Psalm 1
Years before our current political divisions, I worked with a guy who had different political leanings than my own. He sometimes referred to his faith but was not aggressively evangelical. There was a politician I strongly disliked, and whom most of my friends disliked as well. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it must have been derogatory.
My co-worker approached and quietly asked me, “How do I speak to you about your political opinions?” I paused, then said only “Oh.”
I was startled into silence, because he would sometimes ask me about politics, and whenever I answered he was curious, a good listener, and non-judgmental despite being senior to me in the organization. It hit me suddenly that he was modeling, “Do unto others…” and that I had not even seen it. I resolved to change my tone. – Elizabeth Benson
Christianity Today writer J. Thomas shared some thoughts on this topic:
The seat of scoffers in particular seems to be a place we are often inclined to occupy. One could argue that our culture is addicted to snark, the online, modern adaptation of scoffing; a more refined form of mockery for our technological age. We have become like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets. We sit back, higher up than everyone else, hurling our scoff and mockery in chat rooms and comment sections. Whole blog posts and articles are even written in the language of snark.
On the one hand we could blame the internet. … But as the warning of Psalm 1 proves, people were prone to scoffing long before the advent of the world wide web.
At the root level scoffing is brought on by fear, fear of being wrong and fear of looking naive. In that way the seat of scoffers appears safe. If we sit there no one will question us or look down on us. When we do turn to scoffing, mockery, snark or any other member of the family of discontent (including cynicism and skepticism) we do so in order to hedge our bets or protect our image. As we age this is particularly tempting as we don’t want others to think us childish in our thinking.
Theologian Timothy Keller explains, “Sarcasm and irony can be effective ways to drive a point home, but derision and contempt cannot be the settled, main way that sinners talk to other sinners.”
Lord, help us aim for humble listening and avoid scoffing as we seek to heal the political divide. Amen. - Elizabeth Benson