Zen and the Art of Civil Discourse
Image: Ludomił Sawicki on Unsplash
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stepped out of the fire. Then the high officers, officials, governors, and advisers crowded around them and saw that the fire had not touched them. Not a hair on their heads was singed, and their clothing was not scorched. They didn’t even smell of smoke!
Daniel 3:26-27 NLT
One of the books that most impacted my teenage years was Robert M Pirsig’s ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. I was deeply moved (for my own tragic reasons) by the father-son story the book tells, but I was also gripped by Pirsig’s philosophical musings. I felt that he understood something others had missed – about the future of the West and the huge changes we were moving through in the 1970’s. I found great hope in his description of ‘Quality’ as the meeting point of subjective and objective perspectives. As a follower of Christ, I was both challenged and encouraged by Pirsig’s thinking. Challenged because he so resoundingly questions the more fundamentalist and dogmatic aspects of faith I might find myself drawn to, but encouraged because I could see a way forward in which real faith remained possible beyond the demise of these same fundamentalisms. I was reminded of the book recently when I came across this quote:
“You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.”
I affirm the truth of this statement for two reasons. Firstly, because I can see it in our culture. The shrill fanaticisms of both left and right create little of real value in public discourse – and the louder the shouting gets, the less I am inclined to believe that either side is standing on any kind of solid ground. The man who is flailing about, his arms spinning like windmills, is a man who knows the mud he’s standing on is sliding. Non-one secure in their beliefs needs to defend them with histrionics. Calm is not the only measure of credibility, but it is a measure that matters. Secondly, I can affirm this statement because I see it in me. The beliefs I am most tempted to defend with a raised voice are the beliefs I hold with the least real confidence. On the occasions when I get really riled; when my bluff and bluster are embarrassingly strident, an inner voice whispers that it is my insecurity, not my faith, that is speaking. Mercifully, the older I get the quicker I am to hear and heed this voice.
Writer Anne Lamott says that “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely.”
One of my goals for the coming season is to have even-tempered, human-to-human conversations with people I deeply disagree with. This does not mean holding any less passionately to the views that mean so much to me, but it does mean accepting that civil discourse is a value worth preserving. This is not an approach promoted by our current social media channels. Facebook and their ilk have monetised attention, and outrage is attention-grabbing, but I want to resist their corrosive influence.
Can those of us who seek to live as followers of Jesus commit to seeking calm in our conversations, even with those we struggle to understand, let alone agree with? Can we enter the furnace of social media interactions – seven times hotter than our boiling point – and yet emerge untouched by the smell of smoke?
Cultures shift
As oceans flow
Ancient waters
Trace the tides
And seek new shapes.
Creative in the currents
God’s spirit
Is the wind
Across the waves.
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