Achieving Disagreement–in real time

God is in favor of same sex marriage because God placed a rainbow in the sky when the Genesis flood was over. QED. Me on Facebook

On the day before Independence Day I posted an appeal for a patriotic commitment to learning how to achieve disagreement on controversial issues.

Patriotism and Achieving Disagreement

I wrote that post a week earlier; little did I know that the very next day I would have the opportunity to work on this myself! I have often told anyone who would listen that the only reason I am on Facebook is that it provides an excellent vehicle for the dissemination of my blog (as do Twitter and, to a lesser extent, LinkedIn). But on the Saturday after writing about achieving disagreement I was having Facebook fun. In the wake of two Supreme Court decisions in which the majority of the justices had the good sense to agree with my own beliefs, and with only three days remaining before the official beginning of sabbatical, I was feeling good. With a bit of time on my hands I started throwing some things out there for Facebook consumption. Here are a few:

• I’ve been reading a lot of bad arguments today in which people use the Bible to support their position on same-sex marriage. Not wanting to be left out, here’s mine: God is in favor of same sex marriage because God placed a rainbow in the sky when the Genesis flood was over. QED.
• I think the President enjoyed being President this week–perhaps for the first time in six and a half years.
• For anyone still worried that same-sex marriage threatens the institution of marriage, meet two of those threatening people. Buster and Donna
• As usual, I am proud of my Episcopal Church. I offer this statement from the Episcopal Bishop of Rhode Island as an alternative to the religious outrage over yesterday’s SCOTUS decision being expressed by Catholic leadership and conservative Evangelicals. Episcopal Bishop welcomes Supreme Court’s decision on marriage
• I posted a link to this very cool map: States where same sex marriage is legal
• I put rainbows on my Facebook picture:
  And finally:

For those who are inclined to quote (or misquote) the Bible to support their anti-same sex marriage position, one of my all-time favorite television scenes:

This one produced one of the most interesting Facebook conversations I have ever participated in on Facebook, a conversation with a man I knew as a teenager during a year at Bible school more than four decades ago and with whom I connected on Facebook just a few months ago. Here is that unedited conversation.

• XXX: The important emphasis should never have been and shouldn’t now be Gay or not Gay but rather Saved or not Saved. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Emphasis should always be Jesus Christ. The rest will sort itself out.

• ME: I agree with your sentiment about the emphasis on Christ. I find the Evangelical “saved/not saved” language to be as problematic as the Roman Catholic “extra salus nulla ecclesiam [no salvation outside the church].”

• XXX: Saved/not saved problematic? Is there a third option? Perhaps the mark is missed when the saved forget 1 John 1:6….” the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”

• ME: The obvious third option is to refuse to use the “in/out” binary altogether. Christianity is one way to seek God–one of many. As a good friend of mine who is also a fine Catholic theologian says, “I fully expect to see my Jewish and Muslim sisters and brothers in heaven.” Assuming there is a heaven, that is.

• XXX: Hmmm what we expect and what we get are two very different things. So either the Gospel of Christ is true or it is false and thus the plan of salvation is either true or false and thus the words of scripture are either true or false. Yes there are many perceived ways to seek God. Death will bring the true answer for each one of us.

• ME The good news is that God loves us and has made it possible for us to have relationship with the divine. Making definitive judgments about which ways of seeking that relationship are legitimate and which ways are not is well above any human being’s pay grade.

• XXX Really?.. even when scripture says that the only way to the Father is through Jesus Christ? How does the Muslim get around that? Allah? Seems scripture is very easy to follow and understand unless as I said above that the scriptures are false to begin with.

• ME You and I are working within very different frameworks, XXX. You’re assuming that I accept the Bible as the exclusive word of God, God’s only way of communicating with human beings. You are assuming that I accept the judgmental, narrow version of Christianity that I was raised in and that my father spent his adult life breaking free of. You are assuming that a God who is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance is willing to send the vast majority of human beings who have ever lived to eternal damnation. And you assume that “scripture is very easy to follow and understand.” I share none of those assumptions.

• XXX I do appreciate you being very candid. You are correct–two very different frameworks of thought. And I apologize– Yes my assumptions were incorrect. We all choose the roads we travel on. Only death will prove whether or not those roads were the right ones.

• ME I have appreciated the exchange, XXX, and agree with your final sentiment. I’d like to continue the conversation in the future.

• XXX agreed.

I congratulated my friend on the birth of his latest grandchild a couple of days later when he posted the news on Facebook and we promised to continue the conversation soon. I’m looking forward to it.

After our exchange, which spread over a couple of hours, was finished I thought “wow—maybe we just achieved disagreement!” It’s most unlikely that either one of us will nudge the other very far away from our very different frameworks of thought and belief relevant to same sex marriage, engagement with the divine, or what happens after we die. But it was a civil, even friendly, conversation between two people who significantly disagree on important issues because we began by finding some places where we agree. Imagine that.