Culture Friday - Compassion in disagreement

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, the 28th of May, 2021.

You’re listening to The World and Everything in It and we thank you for joining us today. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Well, here we are today, last day at World Journalism Institute up at Dordt University—Sioux Center, Iowa—working with 25 excellent students, helping them with news writing, feature writing, and broadcast journalism. It’s been a grueling and rewarding two weeks here, investing in the lives of young people who want to glorify God in this profession.

It’s Culture Friday and we’ll continue our annual tradition and have students asking the questions. And before we do that, let’s welcome John Stonestreet. John is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Hi John.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning!

EICHER: Let’s jump in. First question.

GRACE KENYON: My name is Grace Kenyon, and I will be a senior at Wheaton College. How should Christians engage with mainstream journalism in such a way that allows us to stay grounded in truth but also demonstrate compassion and willingness to be in discussion with non-Christians?

STONESTREET: Grace, it's a great question. I don't think it's just a question for mainstream journalism, because everything is hot-taked these days.

So I think there's a number of ways that we can answer your question, how do we engage with mainstream journalism? First of all, let's get more of you to be journalists, which is why I think this program is so cool. And why I think some of you should really take seriously this call to be a truth teller.

But you need to think about your job that way. You need to think about what it means to be a distinctly Christian journalist, a journalist who's a Christian, and not just one that you know, is moral and doesn't lie, but does journalism for God's purposes.

I remember years ago, for example, having a conversation with a girl who told me about her friend who is a fashion designer, and she said, it's so important that we have Christians in that field. And I said, Why? And listen to what she said. She said, Because fashion designers tell culture, what beautiful is. And I think you need to ask that same question. What do journalists do? And what is the Christian calling there? And what does that mean to actually go out? And do journalism? as Christ? Would under the authority, the rule and reign of Christ? What does that look like? That's a different way than just, you know, how do I navigate the world of journalism without getting fired? Or how do I, you know, deal with this, you know, kind of terrible world of journalism as a Christian, it's a different world.

Now, let me go a little bit deeper than that. Because, you know, one of the features I would say that the way journalism has done today, what it does to us, first of all, it makes us care about things that aren’t important, and keeps us from caring about things that are. So that's one thing, right? Is care about things that are important, you have to have those kind of the biblical framework of what truly matters, and then elevate those things. What's truly broken, what's truly harmful, what's truly redemptive. That's going to be a huge distinctive.

Another thing has to do with the meaning of words. So what's important? What do words mean? What is the task of journalism? And then I think there's going to be an increasingly important reason for Christians to embrace something that Rod Dreher has, thankfully brought to all of our attention again, which is a speech or actually an essay written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, called “Live Not by Lies.”How

Look, he said, he said, in the context of Soviet Russia, he was appealing to his fellow people, he goes, you know, look, they're lying. We know they're lying. They know, we know they're lying, and yet they're lying anyway. So what do you do in a situation like that, and when those lies are reinforced by the power of the state. He said, You know, it doesn't mean you have to go fight every fight. But here's the thing we can never be allowed to do, or allow ourselves to do. And that is to say something that's not true.

STEPHANIE MORTON: My name is Stephanie Morton, I’m a student at Belhaven University. How do you foster productive and caring conversations with people on “the other side” in a culture that attacks the person rather than the idea?

STONESTREET: Well, Stephanie, I think it's the question, I believe, and we've talked and written and held conferences on this. And I think Father Sirico once put it this way, we got to be ruthless with ideas and gentle with people. And the reason we got to be ruthless with ideas, is because ideas have consequences. And bad ideas have victims. So bad ideas when they go unchecked actually end up harming other people. And so we engage those things that matter out of love.

Now, the lie you're going to hear is that you can't have these conversations in a loving way, if you disagree. And the Bible just doesn't give us that as an alternative. It doesn't mean you have to fight every fight. But the Bible not only tells you that truth, and love can go together, that you don't get one without the other. They're both sourced in the person of Jesus Christ. So to be truthful, but not to be loving is not to be truthful, to be loving, but not to be truthful is not to be loving.

Now, you specifically asked how do we deal with people on the other side who attack the person rather than the idea? I think one of the ways you do as you point out when they're attacking the person instead of the idea that the best tactical way that I know of to do this is the tactic we learn from Jesus and Socrates. And that is the tactic of asking questions, questions, like what do you mean by that? How do you know that's true? What if you're wrong? These are rhetorical strategies. And you know, it's always the case when someone feels like you're willing to listen to them that they're willing to listen to you. And I think we're probably too quick to give answers and not quick enough to ask questions. And of course, that's the rhetorical strategy Jesus used. People come to Jesus with question. He'd ask a better question. They'd come in assuming an idea. You know, Matthew 19, about divorce, Jesus would ask another question, exposing the assumptions and the idea.

This is a skill set that we need to learn. But it's amazing how far we will go to prepare ourselves for a career that we want or, you know, a job that we want and so we'll do the preparation because we want to live that kind of life. I think if we actually value the kind of life in which other people are treated as the image of God and which ideas are taken seriously, the people are cared for, then we will work just as hard to develop some of these tactical skills as well.

EICHER: John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks!

STONESTREET: Thank you!

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