Before You Get Sucked Into Another Social Media Feud, Make Yourself This Promise

I fiercely believe in the way of Jesus.

That trekking after him can stir health and well-being between people, that it can bring people together for good, and that it can strengthen and transform communities…even societies.

A person could spend a thousand lifetimes and never convince me otherwise.

That’s why some conversations on the internet–between one group of Christians who claim to follow after Jesus and another–can sometimes suck the wind out of me.

It’s not the content of the conversations (or the fact that they happen) that prick at my heart.

I am an Enneagram 8 and an ENTJ–both of which, if you put a lot of stock in those personality profiles, paint me as that textbook oldest child, the aggressive go-getter who pursues what she believes and doesn’t back down…even to her own demise.

I’ve never been accused of being timid.

What that means, practically speaking, is I am not one to shy away from a good disagreement; from bantering back and forth about differing opinions or from calling out injustice.

What that means is I sometimes enjoy locking horns a little too much.

But I try (emphasis on try) not to do that recklessly.

As a little old age has fallen (maybe it is those wise gray hairs?),I’ve learned a lot about infusing my conversation skills with kindness. And dare I say it? Balance.

(On my good days anyways.)

Which means I’ve come to consider it my obligation to make space for others who want to raise their voice. To work hard at listening and learning from diverse perspectives. To squash the myth that we must feel threatened by opposition. And to embrace the importance of hearing out–not silencing–dissenters.

I think there is always room to hear out another voice or point of view. And I don’t think seeking to befriend or better understand divergent people subtracts anything from the quality of our own beliefs.

But here is where I grow sick on it all.

It’s the tone of the conversations that get me.

The mean-spirited vocabulary.

The subtle shifts away from arguing a point to attacking a person.

The dismissiveness.

I sometimes don’t handle this perfectly. Exhibit A.

I recently wrote an article for Christianity Today’s Hermeneutics blog called I’ve Grown Cynical of Cynicism that discussed the importance of eventually moving beyond cynicism.

The article reached into my life, into the dark stretches where I’ve sometimes become unhealthily entrenched in rehearsing and re-visiting my frustrations. Into the moments when my skepticism and angst subtracted from my emotional health and happiness. And my faith.

The article was meant, then, to be a telling of the value of moving beyond disillusionment…once you’ve engaged it; NOT an effort to silence people who want to voice their frustrations. I had thought my affinity for the frustrated would be obvious, because–after all–I wrote Dear Church: Letters From a Disillusioned Generation and am currently putting together Beyond the Broken Church–both of which spend a lot of energy engaging disillusionment.

But that wasn’t the case.

Never assume.

There was a group who I referenced in the article, in fact, who read my words as an attempt to silence people with different points of views. This was probably in part because I mentioned in the article how I felt followers of their Facebook page sometimes became inflammatory toward others and attacked them. In retrospect, it makes sense that this statement–which would read as an accusation from a stranger–would discolor my purpose.

Thankfully, I was able to see that because after the article went live and the reactions began to air, I took a deep breath and dove right into the people I’d just called an inflammatory Facebook-follower mob who occasionally go for the throat.

Yikes, right?

But I’ve learned that is the only way forward in times like this. You can’t dismiss people. You can’t refuse to honor their voice. Even if you disagree or have been offensive, you have to go in and look them in the eye and own up to your indiscretions and treat others like humans.

So I went in and said, hey, I didn’t mean to silence anyone. I meant to share my experience. And I’m all for engaging frustration. I just don’t think it should be mean-spirited. It’s important to me that when we’re calling out hate, we don’t do so in a way that perpetuates hate.

I repeated that a few times. And, I’m not going to lie, when a few of the group members challenged my motives, I was sometimes tempted to shoot back dismissive sarcasm.

But here’s what I knew deep inside of me. Since I was the one who wrote the article which was posted on a national platform, my voice had been elevated. Lots of people got to hear my take on this group of people, while there was no guarantee every article reader would also hear out the differing opinions of those I characterized.

Their perspective, by the way, was that the group provided an open place to freely dialog about their frustrations. That for many of them, it was–in fact–healing.

Since my words had prompted this hurt and ill-will, I felt it was my responsibility to hear them out. Not to agree with everything said, but to take on humility to listen and learn where possible; to not pre-maturely close the conversation by being defensive…or attitude-y.

(I am sure there are differing opinions on whether I succeeded.)

In any case, I spent nearly all of my day that day responding and replying to a variety of people in this Facebook group. Some of them were incredibly respectful, gracious, and empathetic. A couple of them were angry and seemed to want to mock me more than to engage me. And a couple didn’t want to find a peaceful middle ground with me no matter how hard I tried.

It is hard to balance bravery and humility, to both say what you believe needs to be said but to respect the opinions of those who disagree, but I did the best I could.

In the end, I clicked through and friended on Twitter everyone I’d met in the group who had seemed interested in conversation. I read some of their blogs. And I exchanged a few private messages with some of them who graciously thanked me for coming in and being willing to listen.

I think I walked away with, at least on social-media scales, some new friends.

And I think the act of staying in relationship with them will be a healthy spiritual discipline for me. To follow them long-term and in effect to force myself to value their voices; to learn from their tweets and points of view, and to–in some cases, I’m sure–allow their differing perspectives to remind me that my way is not the only way of looking at things.

Okay, onto Exhibit B. But this one isn’t about me.

This week another controversy hit the fan in the church arena when Rachel Held Evans tweeted about how out of the 100 speakers at the Nines conference, only 4 of them were women.

(And I’ll go ahead and say that regardless of the religious pole you shore up around, and regardless of your beliefs about women in leadership, that proportion of men to women doesn’t–in my humble opinion–present a good picture of the balance men and women bring to every local church through their various giftings. Since I am a conference producer myself, though, I get that it can be difficult to acquire the speakers you want, and that sometimes disproportionate numbers don’t tell the whole story–about how many women declined, demanded over-budget honorariums, or just weren’t available. But still, after those organizers lick their wounds from having social media around their efforts re-focused around a different theme than they intended, I bless them and hope they’ll doubledown on improving that ratio. And I hope women will graciously and purposely accept their invitations. This is a great opportunity to grow a solution together.)

After Rachel’s tweets, Jonathan Merritt wrote an article that asked Are Christian conferences sexist? He listed the number of men and women at all of the headlining Christian conferences in the country (minus gender-specific ones), which brought more voices into the controversy. Those who don’t believe in women preaching suggested, for example, that it made sense their events would include less women than men.

All of this is backstory for what became a somewhat heated exchange on Twitter.

As people responded to Rachel and then Jonathan, my stomach sometimes dropped. I felt hot and embarrassed at some of the mean-spiritedness and dismissiveness.

Real honest to goodness grief.

Some of the reactions from people of faith, in my opinion, were unnecessarily combative…and a little mean even. And as people who believe in Jesus faced off with others who believe in Jesus, the whole thing felt so so sad.

But. And here’s the beautiful part.

Rachel and Jonathan, particularly, but also a few others did a fabulous job of continuing to gently direct the heated exchange away from personal attacks and back toward open, authentic discussion.

And the conversations continued. Lo and behold, it even became quite inspiring, birthing Twitter exchanges that turned out to be quite graceful and growing. One leader who’d let Rachel have it, more or less, apologized to Rachel publicly. Rachel warmly accepted. The Nines invited Rachel to present in the future; she seems to have tentatively agreed.

So here’s one principle I take from both of these situations.

When we continue in conversation, treat others as valued partners in the conversation, and generously listen, we often create beautiful learning experiences for all involved.

We can choose to friend instead of villify; to move nearer instead of farther away; to speak differing opinions with respect and not arrogance.

That’s when a simple thought occurred to me.

What would happen, I wondered, if the next time a social media argument flared, we vowed to friend and follow the people we were disagreeing with?

Not as an act of agreement, but as an act of commitment to Jesus’ instruction that we love our enemies.

I’d love to hear what you think.