‍Jo Vitale [00:00:35] So welcome to the podcast where we invite you to ask away. Hi friends. Thanks for joining Vince and I for another episode of Ask Away. We're so grateful that you're listening in, and we've really enjoyed receiving your heartfelt questions for future episodes over email and voicemail. Each episode of Ask Away is based around a tough question of faith. So if you or somebody you know has a burning question that you'd like us to engage with, then stick around at the end of today's episode to hear how you can send it in. In the meantime, today we wanted to share with you a talk that Vince gave a few months back at a Relational Wisdom conference in Montana titled what is a Biblical Approach to Disagreement? Wherever you're listening from in the world and whatever you're facing right now, disagreement is something that we all have to deal with on a daily basis. I love listening to Vince on this topic because he's helped me approach disagreement with less fear, and with a far greater expectation for how loving, respectful dialog can deepen relationships even when we're engaging on the most culturally contentious of topics. I hope this episode blesses you too. Here's Vince. 

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Vince Vitale [00:01:49] I want to talk this morning about disagreeing well. And it is amazing, as Ken said-- the marvelous talks by Ken and Rankin and Kelly. I really do believe that the Holy Spirit is weaving together not just the content, but the posture with which we want to approach these questions. So I want to talk about disagreeing well, disagreeing biblically in a way that honors Jesus and respects the person that's standing in front of us. This is something that's been important to me for a long time. It was a significant part of my own journey to faith. Was people disagreeing with me as a skeptic at the time really well. I was challenged to read the Bible by two soccer teammates during my undergraduate studies. I was studying philosophy at the time, and I had lots of thoughts and lots of ideas and lots of questions, and I was sort of both ignorant and arrogant, which is not a great combination. But this was a community of people who disagreed with me really well. And even as I began to read the Bible, I was so overconfident in myself and my thoughts, I would actually cross things out. I would add things in the margins. I would actually write a big BS in the margin wherever I disagreed. And Christians would say, "Vince, why do you have a BS in the margin of your Bible?" And I'd say, "Oh, that verse makes for a great Bible study." It would have been very easy to write me off, right? 

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[00:03:23] I mean, here's a guy who's crossing things out. He's writing BS in the margin of his Bible, but there was this community that disagreed with me really well. Week after week, month after month, they refused to compromise on grace or truth. And eventually that led to me on my knees in my dorm room 122 Jolene Hall surrendering my life to Jesus. So disagreeing well has always been important to me personally, and it's also increasingly important to us as a community and culturally. As we heard from Ken and our other speakers, American culture is undergoing rapid change, scary change, polarizing change. This is the Wall Street Journal study that Ken referenced, I believe, on Thursday night. And it says there a percentage of people who say these values are very important to them, and you see the decline and then look at the decline from 2000 and (does it say 19 there?) to the present. That's really significant. Everything is changing except for money. Everybody likes money. And that's staying consistent. But everything else is rapidly changing. The experience of living in America as Christians is increasingly putting us in a place where we are having to disagree, and we're having to figure out what it looks like to disagree in a way that honors Jesus. And so I'm hoping to get very practical this morning in almost a sort of nuts and bolts sort of way, because it doesn't do any good for me to wax lyrical about some sort of abstract vision for disagreeing, if when the person standing in front of us disagrees with us we still have no idea what to do. 

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[00:05:04] So I want to get very concrete and say what actually needs to happen in our heads when we're standing face to face and we feel the intense disagreement. Like what actually needs to happen between the moment that we hear and feel the disagreement and then something helpful actually coming out of our mouths. Like Lord help. That's a good starting point. Let's start with Lord help, but then what's the actual process that we can apply to whatever the disagreement is about? Because that's the other thing. I could stand up here and say to you, these are the three biggest disagreements right now. Here's a canned answer for each of those disagreements. Say the same thing that I say. That's not very helpful, especially at the rate with which culture is changing now, because two years from now the questions are going to be completely different. So we need to know what is a biblical approach so that whatever the disagreement is, when we hear something for the first time, we have a sense of how to process that. How did Jesus approach this? Let's start there. I think of when the Pharisees disciples asked Jesus the culturally charged question, should we pay taxes to Caesar? Now, if I were Jesus, I would have been so annoyed. Really? I'm the God of the universe come to talk to you about the eternal truths of life, and this is the question that you have for me? Taxes. Really? Is that what we're going to spend our time talking about? And the text to the passage says it was not even a sincere question. 

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[00:06:35] They were trying to trap him. But Jesus, in the most remarkable way, gets beyond the frustration and responds in this beautiful way. He says, give me a coin. Then he asks whose image is on it. They say Caesar's. And then he says, well, give to Caesar what is Caesar's, but give to God what is God's. The text says that they were amazed at his words, and they walked away. They should have stayed, and they should have asked what is God's. And if you follow the logic of the conversation, we can't speak for Jesus, but I think it's very likely he would have said, whose image is on you? Give me a coin. Whose images on it? Now we know to whom it belongs. Whose image is on you? And here's what I find just so convicting about this passage. Should we pay taxes to Caesar? All I hear is a frustrating cultural landmine of a question that I don't want anything to do with. But Jesus immediately, instinctively heard a question about belongingness. To whom does something belong? Whose image is on this coin? Now you know to whom it belongs. Whose image is on you? Jesus gets from the question of culture to the truth of the gospel. He finds something positive in what the person he's disagreeing with is saying. And he takes that as the common ground to begin to build a bridge. We see a similar approach. I'm going to give you two more examples of this sort of positive approach that we see from Jesus, and then thirdly from Paul. 

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[00:08:29] Similar approach in John chapter four, when Jesus speaks to a Samaritan woman at a well. It's Jesus's longest recorded conversation, so it's worth spending some time on and learning from. Now he didn't have to go through Samaria. He took the scenic route in order, I imagine, to intentionally encounter someone that he disagreed with. Even in that little detail, there's a learning point for us. For context, there was such a tense and bloody history between Samaritans and Jews that we get lines like this in the rabbinical writings. Let no Israelite eat one mouthful of anything that is a Samaritans. For if you eat but a little mouthful, he is as if he ate swines flesh. That's the context that Jesus is intentionally walking into. And what does he do? He honors this woman with the question, "Will you give me a drink?" I will drink from your jar, even though you are a woman. I will drink from your jar even though you are a foreigner. I will drink from your jar even though you are shunned by your community and so you have to come all by yourself to this well. It says in the middle of the day, the heat of the middle of the day. I will drink from your jar, even though people like you and people like me are not supposed to talk to each other, we're supposed to hate each other. It's incredible. It's only a few words. One single question and Jesus shatters centuries of entrenched barriers of racism, sexism, social stigmatization in one sentence. 

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[00:10:21] But it's actually the rest of the conversation that I want to focus on, because at every main juncture of this conversation-- and I don't have time to go through it in great detail. So read it for yourself thoroughly later. But at every main juncture in this conversation, the Samaritan woman identifies disagreement and Jesus identifies agreement. Okay, so the first time that she opens her mouth, she criticizes Jesus. You are a Jew. I'm a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? The second time she opens her mouth, she makes fun of Jesus. You have nothing to draw with, the well is deep. Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself? If you were Jesus, how would you have responded to that question? I know what I would have done. I would have turned the entire well into a chocolate fountain, miraculously produced a strawberry, dipped it in, taken a bite really loudly and said, "Am I greater than your father, Jacob?" I know how I would respond to that criticism and then to being made fun of. But Jesus responds so graciously. He finds something positive in what she has said. And he says, you know, you're right. It's not really about this physical water in this well. And then he builds on her point. Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I will give them will never thirst. And I don't have time to work through every detail. But we continue to see this positive pattern through this passage that I hope you'll read later. "I have no husband," the woman says. Jesus could have said, give me a break. Maybe technically true, but you're living with a man. So you're being dishonest here. 

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[00:12:12] Okay. But, again, instead he sort of find some way to find something true in her words. You know what? You're right when you say you have no husband. What you've said is actually quite true. Even though he doesn't shy away from the truth of the matter, he still find some way to say, yeah, there's something right. There's something true in what you've said. And then again, our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. You can feel "you Jews". You can feel the negativity in her tone here. The disagreement between us is just too great to overcome. But, again, Jesus bends over backwards to find some remnant of truth in what she said. You don't think it's right to worship in Jerusalem? Well, okay. You know what? Maybe you're onto something there because even Jerusalem is a shadow of things to come. There's going to come a time when we worship neither in that temple nor on your mountain, but actually in spirit and truth. At every point in the conversation, she thinks the worst of what Jesus has said, and Jesus thinks the best of what she has said. She takes the least charitable interpretation. He takes the most. She's trying to find what's fault in Jesus's words. He's trying to find what's true. He's looking for what's right before he looks for what's wrong. And what is the fruit of this positive approach to the conversation from Jesus? Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people? Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Said no one ever. 

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[00:14:04] Have you ever just stopped and just looked at that sentence? If someone knew everything you ever did, would you ever go back to a large group of people and say, "Come, meet this person who knows everything I ever did." This sentence tells us everything we need to know about the gracious way that Jesus interacted with this woman. Let's look at one more biblical example of a positive approach to disagreement. This one's acts 17. Paul has a chance to address the Athenians. And once again, things are not aligning for a very charitable interpretation. It says that Paul was greatly distressed to see the city was full of idols. Other translations say utterly idolatrous, wholly given to idolatry. Just think about how you would be feeling if you walked around a place that you think is wholly idolatrous. And then the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers start calling him names. We degraded to name calling. They start calling him a babbler. Once again, what would your first line have been? I'm pretty sure the Jersey Italian in me would have taken over. Mine would not have been a gracious first line. And Paul says, "People of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious." He starts by paying them a compliment. Even though we're told he walked around the city carefully and looked at their idols. What was he looking for? I would have been looking for the negative and figuring out how I could judge them most harshly based on their idols. He was walking around looking for the positive. 

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[00:15:53] The negative was probably obvious to him, but he went searching what's the remnant here that I can affirm? I see that in every way you are very religious. He was looking for something good and then he finds something true. He quotes their own cultural authorities, the Greek poets. In order to describe God. For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. And then here's the most amazing thing. By taking this approach, Paul is not only building a bridge between himself and his audience that he disagrees with. He's also simultaneously building a bridge between rival factions in his own audience. The two rival philosophies that dominated Athens were Epicureanism and Stoicism. Epicureans thought there was a divine, he was very transcendent, far off, deistic, impersonal, not concerned with human affairs. And then there were the Stoics saw the divine is imminent all around us in everything. Similar in this respect to what maybe in modern day we would think of as pantheism what kind of New Age type beliefs. So knowing that this divide exists within his audience, what does Paul do? He finds something that he can affirm in each of their philosophies. He gives a nod to the Epicureans. You know what? You're right that God is transcendent, that he is distinct, that he is so very different from us. In fact, the God who made the world and everything in it does not live in temples built by human hands. Therefore, we should not think that the divine is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human design and skill. 

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[00:17:56] But then, just as the Stoics are starting to get angsty in their seats and get annoyed, he turns to them and he gives a nod to the Stoics too. You know what? You're right, Stoics, that God is imminent, that he's not just far off, but he is right here with us. God himself gives everything life and breath and everything else. That's how close he is. For in him we live and move and have our being. And then Paul finds in their own poets the perfect analogy. We are his offspring. God is our parent. And yes, Epicureans, a parent is so much greater than a child. There's a distance, a vast gap even between us and God. But, Stoics, what could be closer and more connected and more intimate than the relationship between a parent and a child? I see you two. And then the perfect invitation for his audience and the divisions within his audience. God did this so that we could seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him. In other words, God is other. He is transcendent. There is a distance. He is above us. That's why we need to seek him and reach out for him. And yet, Stoics, he is not far from any one of us. Not transcendent or imminent, transcendent and imminent. Drawing on both of their belief systems, cognizant not only of the disagreement between himself and his audience, but the disagreement within his audience, Paul takes the remnants of good and truth in both of the philosophies and combines them to present a unifying, true vision of the true God. 

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[00:20:00] I mean, talk about peacemaking skills. And he's simultaneously building a bridge between him and the audience he disagrees with, between the rival factions within his audience, all as he's then presenting an invitation to begin to see that bridge between all of us and God Himself. If you ask me, that is so much more attractive and compelling than if he had just stood up and done what he could have done and what he had the learning to do, just tell them all why they're wrong. He's like, Epicureans, here's why you're wrong. Stoics, here's why you're wrong. And by the way, here's why I'm right. How do you think that would have been received? I've had the privilege of seeing a lot of people come to Christ. I've never seen someone come to Christ just by being told how wrong they are. But when people are treated in the gracious way that Paul treated the Athenians, that Jesus treated the Samaritan woman, what is the response? Just a beautiful line. We want to hear you again on this subject. Wouldn't you love to hear that from the people in your life, your colleagues, your family, your friends? Like, I'd like to hear you again on this subject. And it even says that some people even became followers of Paul and believed in response to his address. 

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[00:21:26] Now, I'm not saying that what I've showcased in John four and 17 is the sort of only approach to disagreement in Scripture. There certainly were times, depending on the context and particularly when speaking to the powerful, when Jesus takes a more aggressive approach. You brood of vipers! Get behind me, Satan. I'm not saying there's a one size fits all when it comes to disagreement, but I do believe this approach is biblical, and I love the way that it challenges the typical approaches to disagreement that we see over and over again in our culture. Our fleshly instinct is not to build a bridge in this positive way to culture. No, we want to demolish all the bridges so that the bad guys can't get over and infect me and my family and my way of life. We want to go to war against culture. We want to counter culture. We want to tell culture how wrong it is in 60 seconds or less, and then do a big mic drop. The problem-- which I would do, one thing about these you can't do a mic drop. But the problem with that approach is that even if you win the argument, you lose the person. And you won't get, "We want to hear you again on this subject." And you certainly won't get, "Come, see a man who told me everything that I ever did." I've come to refer to the approach that I've been commending as a Genesis one, a Romans one approach to this agreement, mostly because it just helps me to actually remember it and remember what to do. The process in the moment. 

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[00:23:09] When someone is disagreeing with me, the first thing I do is remind myself of two simple passages of Scripture. First, Genesis 1:26: "Let us make humankind in our image." The person standing in front of me, no matter how strongly I disagree with them, is created in the image of God. Therefore, there is still good in them; even if it is corrupted, there is still good in them. And then Romans 1:19, which is an incredible passage because Paul is actually referring to unbelievers. And yet he says, "For what is known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them through the creation of the world." And he says in the line before that it could be suppressed, but there's still some sense in which even unbelievers have knowledge of God. So Genesis one and Romans one remind me, whenever I'm looking into the eyes of someone that I disagree with, there is still good in front of me. There is still truth in front of me. So let me find the remnant of good and use it to build a bridge back to goodness itself. Let me find the remnant of truth and use it to build a bridge back to truth itself. What does that look like today? How can we apply this approach, Jesus's approach to the questions of our culture? I'll give you two examples of that. Take the topic of transgenderism. One of today's most culturally charged conversations. You're living in the Bay area, here's an example of the sort of question that I receive not infrequently. I was born biologically male, but I feel I'm in a body I should not be in. I know I am a woman, and I want to undergo gender reassignment surgery so that I can have a new body that reflects who I really am. What does Christianity have to say to someone like me? 

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[00:25:06] Now, sadly, I think when most Christians hear something like that, they may just be this fear. There may be no sense of even where to begin to think about what this person has said, or to start a conversation. And the instinct is for us to get defensive and to start immediately analyzing this and picking it apart and finding all of the things that we see that are wrong in it. But as Christians, is there anything in what this person has said that we can identify as a remnant of good or truth? I find Second Corinthians chapter five, the first five verses of that chapter, incredibly helpful in answering that question. I want you to listen to the first five verses through the lens of what this passage might have to say to someone who's experiencing gender dysphoria. "Speaking about our physical bodies. Paul says, 'For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile, we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling. For while we are in this tent, we groan. And we are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed, but to be clothed instead in our heavenly dwelling. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.'" As a Christian, can I relate to someone not being fully satisfied with their current body? You bet I can. 

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[00:27:01] I'm into my 40s now, I've got a three year old and a four year old that think I'm a jungle gym, and my back aches already every night when I go to sleep. I certainly hope I'm not going to be in this body for all eternity. I'm longing for a different body. As a Christian, can I relate to someone who's longing for a different body? Absolutely. I am so looking forward to an eternal body. Not this aging, corruptible one. One that will never know death or mourning or crying or pain. But then the promise of God in this passage a new body, yes, but not built by human hands. And that's the freedom, is that I don't need to exhaust myself trying to resolve this tension on my own, trying to take matters into my own hands, just hoping that maybe somehow things will work out in the end. No. Rather, the new body that awaits me will be fashioned by God and therefore guaranteed. One more deep point of connection here. Is there any sense in which Jesus can relate to this person's experience? Is there any way in which Jesus can relate to the experience of there being a tension, in some sense, between the fullness of who one is and the body that one is confined to for a time? Absolutely. I mean, Jesus was the infinite, incorruptible God of the universe who voluntarily took on a finite, corruptible body who can understand this person more intensely than Jesus himself. It's a point that my friend Sam Albury highlights, and I just think it's amazing people think, oh, we have this ancient book. How could a book from 2000 plus years ago possibly speak to the new questions of our 21st century culture? And I just think it's incredible how directly the ancient scriptures speak to the questions of the 21st century. 

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[00:29:30] Let me share one more example of this in a more contemporary way- this Genesis one, Romans one approach. Our culture is often referred to as a cancel culture, and that might be summarized as follows. We are offended by everything. We forgive nothing and we cancel everyone. It's not always true, but when that is true, that can be legitimately frustrating. It's frustrating because it's at odds with the gospel. It's frustrating because it creates an ultimatum between being known and being loved. And so we wind up choosing love, but then hiding significant parts of ourselves, hiding our fears, hiding our mistakes, hiding our failings. And then we feel more and more lonely and more and more isolated. It's no way to live. And yet, if we look a little deeper once again and remind ourselves of Genesis one and Romans one, there's actually a surprising remnant of truth in this cancel culture narrative. Let me reword each of these three statements just slightly. Okay. The first one, we are more offensive than we think. Yeah. You know what? When you put it that way, okay. As a Christian, I can find a remnant of truth in that thought. The second one, without God forgiveness is not possible. The statement was just that forgiveness is now possible. But, of course, the assumption of secular culture is that there's no God. So the statement is really without God, forgiveness is not possible. And again, if you put it that way, yeah, I can find a remnant of truth in that statement. And therefore what needs to happen? Someone needs to be canceled. Which is really a way of saying what? 

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[00:31:27] My friend Amy [inaudible] makes this point. When people want someone else to be canceled, they want them to be silenced forever. They don't want them to exist anymore. What do they really want? They want them to die. We are more offensive than we think. Without God, forgiveness is not possible; therefore, someone needs to die. If we are looking for it. If we're walking around Athens like Paul, not just looking for what's wrong, but saying, "Where's the remnant of truth here I can use to build a bridge?" If we're looking for it, there's actually a significant remnant of truth in cancel culture. Sin is serious. It is so serious that there is a need for justice and judgment, and that need is so serious that it requires a sacrificial death. And I find that deeply convicting, in part because these are the very three points on which the American church is often compromising. We don't like talking about sin anymore. It's uncomfortable. We don't like talking about judgment. It's too harsh. We don't like talking about a sacrificial death being the only way to the father, that seems too exclusive. I find it convicting that even in this cultural narrative, if we're looking for the truth, we're challenged on the very points that we are in danger of compromising on. But what's missing in this equation? What's missing is the fact that someone did die. Someone was canceled. The gospel redeems this cultural narrative from bad news to good news. It literally flips the narrative on its head because someone did die. Forgiveness is possible despite our great offense. 

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[00:33:01] When we apply a Genesis one, Romans one approach to cancel culture, we say, you're right that I'm an offensive sinner. You're right that I don't deserve forgiveness. You're right that death is the only just penalty. Now let me show you the one person who took that penalty making forgiveness possible, even for a sinner like me. And so as we seek to disagree well in today's culture, I commend to you a Genesis one, Romans one approach. At a time when we seem like we can't disagree without attacking each other, we have the chance to model something so different when we follow Jesus into this relentless, loving pursuit of what is good and true in the person standing before us. I woke up this morning with the word salvage in my head, which was an interesting word. And I and I just looked up the etymology of the word salvage, and it has the same root as two words: to save and the word safe. Safety. And I thought, oh, that's a good word. When we're in disagreement, when we're disagreeing with the person standing in front of us, let's move out of demolition mode and let's move into salvage mode. Let's follow the heart of our Savior. And when we do, when we look for the remnant of good and the remnant of truth, people will feel safe. People will feel safe. And then we'll have those disagreements in a way that's beautiful and constructive. And then we will hear, "I want to hear you again on this subject." Or even, "Come, see a man, the perfect man, Jesus, who told me everything that I ever did.". 

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[00:34:46] Let's pray. Lord, we just give you praise and we just worship you for your holiness, your goodness and your beauty. Lord, thank you that you are so different from us and so different from the world, from our flesh. Thank you that you give us this beautiful vision of what it looks like to love people, to love people well, to love them the way that you love them. And we just ask this morning, Lord, that's something from what's been said, that you by your Holy Spirit or because that's the only way it can happen, by your Holy Spirit, would you establish something significant in our hearts and would you change us, Lord, that we would give you more glory and that we would serve you and others in a way that delights you? We trust you for it in Jesus name, Amen. 

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Jo Vitale We’re so glad you joined us for Ask Away.

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Vince Vitale If you have a question that needs answering, we’d love to hear it.

Send us an email at askawayquestion@gmail.com or call and leave a voicemail at 321-213-9670.

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Jo Vitale Ask Away is hosted by Vince and Jo Vitale, and produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

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Vince Vitale See you next time. And remember, if you have a question, it’s worth asking.

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