Talking with others

At a recent conference I attended, a colleague offered up a list of Commandments for Having Difficult Conversations........you know, talking with others who might disagree with you about stuff that often gets us a little hot under the collar.

The 2016 presidential election has made it abundantly clear that we lack skills in this delicate art of listening and speaking.  We tend to listen too little and speak too much and in the end, there is more heat than light.

The pastor who shared these rules posted them in the social hall and then simply chose a difficult topic for this week's conversation.  It wasn't something that their congregation was wrestling with; it often had little to do with their community.  The idea was:  get yourself a cup of coffee and come together with other people of faith and practice having a mutual conversation.  With enough practice, it was her hope, that these folks could tackle the more delicate subjects that were important to their shared life......and do it constructively and as a community.

Topics could include:  What to do with 81 (strictly a Syracuse question)?  Vouchers for private education.  The morality of privatizing prisons.  Dress codes for girls only.  Managed health care.  3 strikes and you're in (prison, that is). Abortion.  Gun control.

Over the next week, let's look at the Ten Commandments for Discussions that she shared:

First, start with prayer:
Teach us, O Lord, to check in ourselves and in others all ungenerous judgments, all promptings
of self-assertion, all presumptuous claims; that being ever ready to recognize the needs and
aspirations of others, we may with patience do what lies in us to remove suspicions and
misunderstandings and to honor all people in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Pick your topic and mentally work through the list.

1. Seek to discover the best and strongest points in the other’s position. The weaknesses
in the position we oppose may be clear to us, but we are often blind to the weaknesses in
our own position. Moreover, we are tempted to overlook the strengths of other people’s
positions and the legitimate concerns they are seeking to address.

2. Give other people credit for sincerity. Only God knows the inside of a person’s soul.

3. Do not listen to gossip and secondhand information. What has been filtered through
the mind of someone with an agenda (even if it is our own agenda) is at best only part of
the story and could be a twisted distortion.

4. Avoid classifying people and assuming that they have all the characteristics of the
class to which they are supposed to belong. The “class to which they are supposed to
belong” may not be what people say it is, and everyone is entitled to be taken seriously as
a person, not treated as a stereotype.