Last year ended with the now infamous tweet ‘conversation’ between Andrew Tate and Greta Thunberg in which Andrew asked Greta to: ‘Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.’ Greta’s response cannot be published here.[1] It was not a surprise: two people with different opinions playing the game of mocking and discrediting each other in public. The surprise would have been if one party had deliberately deescalated to genuinely engage and listen to the other.
This provides an example of a problem we face in our time and place. We find ourselves in disagreement with people, yet are no longer able to have the kind of respectful discussions that have been possible at different times in our history. In our cultural context, many of us are finding that the disagreements over significant and practical issues are sharper, more personal and resulting in the termination of relationships and reputations. As a society, there are simply some things we are no longer free to debate in the public square. More people hide their opinions on more issues more often than in the recent past.
How then can we have the kinds of conversations we need to have as human creatures who need to learn to live in this world together? And for those of us who are Christians, how can we have conversations with others beyond mundane observations about the weather? This is important for us, as it is often our more substantial conversations that deepen our relationships with each other and enable us to grow spiritually. Also, it is often in these conversations that we can most naturally share our knowledge and love of the Lord Jesus with those who do not yet know him.[2]
In order to tackle some of these questions, in this article we will begin by thinking about barriers to good conversations in our current context. Subsequent articles will consider some principles of how we might think of conversations constructively and where listening might sit in our theological framework. We will conclude in the final article in this series by thinking through some practical strategies for difficult or intense conversations.
How did we get here?
Conversations both expose and engender our relationships. They alert us to points of tension and relational conflict but they also enable us to understand and grow in our relationships with one another. In every generation there are technological, cultural and social factors that threaten relationships in all kinds of ways. In our time and place, these include: smart phones, social polarisation, smaller and more isolated households and disconnections within our various communities. While some of these are not inherently bad for relationships, the combination of these and other factors deplete our capacity to connect through speaking and listening to each other.
It is unnecessary to add to the breadth of material on these issues, but it may be useful to draw our attention to two factors that make conversations particularly difficult.
Speed
First, we do not have the capacity for the speed of information with which we are constantly bombarded. Our smart phones and other screens have us continually connected to a broad spectrum of information that we often feel obliged to access and process.[3] Most of us do not have the time, energy or expertise to research and understand the context of this information to appraise it with diligence or confidence. Thus, we are left at the mercy of others to interpret it for us. This deepens our dependence on whichever ideological ‘tribe’ we feel most connected to and we tend to adopt their interpretation, reinforcing our commitment to them.
Simultaneous with the increased speed and volume of information is the pace of life, which leaves many perpetually exhausted and stressed. Most people are trying to balance life and work expectations that are incompatible and are beyond their capacity to fulfill. We have lost the skills to know ‘…how to live slow to taste and see and savour.’[4] Instead, we seek to fulfill unrealistic expectations by increasing the speed of our lives, which technological advances in the last 50 years have enabled.
This increased speed of life and information means that we have diminished capacity for conversation. Of course, we continue to chat about inconsequential matters, but to explore together substantial matters of importance we require time to reflect on the information available to us to understand what we think ourselves. Conversation itself requires time and space and effort, all of which requires energy and capacity, both of which are stretched thin. In order to have substantial conversations where we are not merely gathering the thoughts of our tribe and reiterating them, we would need to radically shift how we spend our time.
Safety
Society has increasingly moved to value safety over truth. This value affects us all in various ways by virtue of living in our culture and being constrained but also shaped by it. The ascendancy of safety relates not just to physical safety but also to emotional safety. When safety becomes absolute, differences in opinion (and even nuances) are increasingly construed as threatening. This phenomenon conditions us to value sameness of thought and avoid conversations which may uncover differences. There is little space to accept those whose lives and choices differ from our own. This is even true for Christians, despite the lives of so many key figures in the Bible being shown to make choices many of us would find confronting.[5] Conversation therefore becomes a context for tribal markers to be displayed and safe, familiar alliances constructed or maintained. It cannot be an exchange of views that enable us to grow to know others who are different to ourselves.
It is not surprising in a culture that increasingly values emotional (and other forms of) safety over all else, that we might (implicitly or explicitly) cancel ‘toxic’ people who are different to ourselves and redouble our efforts to meet a particular tribal criterion. We seek safety.
The Real World
These observations have been made by many from different parts of the social and political spectrum. They are not startling. Yet, they do help us to see why having these difficult and necessary conversations with each other is particularly fraught in our time and place. If we refuse to acknowledge the limits God has placed on us as human beings (for example: Job 14:5, Eccles 1:13-15), we are likely to find ourselves functioning poorly in different contexts, especially our relationships with each other. Conversations are increasingly difficult to undertake, particularly when we disagree with each other and more care and good will is required on both sides.
This begs the question of how we might proceed. Society is not going to change for our convenience, and we need to have these conversations, so how might we think well about pursuing them? Specifically, what are some theological principles that might undergird how we think about and practice speaking well with one another? We will turn our attention to this in the next article.
Questions for Thought and Discussion
- In your opinion, what is the biggest barrier to conversations in this current context?
- How do you manage the ‘speed’ issues in your life: the perceived need to process so much information quickly and to live life in a hurry?
- What do you think about the emphasis on safety? When might be it helpful? When does it interfere with human relationships and flourishing?
- What are some important principles that we might need if we are going to try and have difficult conversations?
- Who in your world would you most like to have a substantial conversation with, both to deepen your knowledge of that person and how they think about life and to share yourself with them on a deeper level? How would you like to pray about that?
[1] Greta Thunberg ends year with one of the greatest tweets in history | Rebecca Solnit | The Guardian (viewed online 28/4/2023)
[2] Interview with Dr Carolyn Russell (13/3/2023) Dr Russell is a General Practitioner and Counsellor. She is the co-founder and now, director of Foundations Counselling Centre in Brisbane. We are indebted to Dr Russell for sharing with us her expertise on relationships from a Christian perspective.
[3] Total data volume worldwide 2010-2025 | Statista Graph: Volume of data/information created, captured, copied, and consumed worldwide from 2010 to 2020, with forecasts from 2021 to 2025 in zetabytes. As recently as 2010 this was measured as 2 zetabytes, growing to 64.2 zetabytes in 2020, with projections to 181 zetabytes in 2025. (viewed online 28/4/2023)
[4] Interview with Dr Russell (13/3/2023)
[5] Interview with Dr Russell (13/3/2023)