Talking Past Each Other

April 16, 2024

I just turned 74. I cannot write without Spell Check. In addition, my fingers have become very rebellious and too often go wherever they feel like wandering on the Keyboard. My wife has become my irreplaceable Copy Editor. She checks my essays for clarity and removes sentences and paragraphs that actually contradict my intended theme.

Generally my themes are always revolving around God, Jesus, and the Bible, but I’ll admit at least they end up there: The first complaint I heard was on FB in which a new “pen pal” had enough and left, saying, “Whatever subject you start with, you always end with the Bible!” — She took offense, but not from me especially, but because she had been hurt by some other person or people who claimed to be Christian.

Now, the current exchange I am involved in is on Medium.com. The two of us have been going back and forth for several days, ending up in the same primitive place… Perhaps it is an illustration of “the blind leading the blind and both falling into a ditch.”

However, this morning I awoke with some ideas for this essay. The primary focus is based on a phrase heard in a movie, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

The fellow I am writing to seems intelligent enough… So, why does he seem to react, bristling like a disturbed porcupine?

Maybe it’s me. Maybe the fault lies in my lack of acknowledging that I do recognize his intelligence and do see the validity in some of what he is saying and say that before I attempt to discuss the errors (in my opinion) in his arguments, that is, where I think he and others like him get sidetracked. I don’t make it a point to acknowledge their personhood.

I too often forget it is important to understand that in religious, and political, and social subjects, people make decisions, and we have formed opinions which become locked in. We have made up our minds. So, any discussion that asserts anything contrary registers in our brains as a personal attack. The walls go up. The archers are called to the battlements.

“Peace. Peace? there is no peace!”

We always gravitate to like-minded people. That seems to me to be natural. We usually socialize with people in the same economic bracket. We socialize with people of the same political and religious views. We do not usually welcome people of another stripe. We want to be at peace, and usually we already have hung out a “Do Not Disturb” sign. We have found comfort in the status quo.

Remember what I wrote earlier: I always get back to talking about God, Jesus, and the Bible.

Why torture myself? Christianity is such a turn off! Christians are too judgmental, too fake, too weak with their answers and solutions to real issues and problems, too this, too that. The Bible is too contradictory, too suspicious in origin, too this, too that. God is too absent, too aloof, too hateful and full of spite, too this and too that.

Let me back up and park at this rest stop for just a minute or two…

In a way, I find myself most fortunate for having left my parents Presbyterian Church during my adolescent, formative years. It wasn’t doing one thing for me. I count myself fortunate however for two main reasons:

• On the one hand, I was exposed to all the basic Bible stories from the Creation to the stories about Jesus and His Disciples.
• On the other hand, I was not locked in, but still rejecting and still questioning — like “Why does God allow wars and poverty and famine and disease?”

So, maybe God did exist, but if he existed, you couldn’t prove it by me.

It is important for me to emphasize here the adjective “formative,” because I hadn’t really formed an opinion one way or another. I was still searching for those answers to life’s questions without making sweeping conclusions set in stone.

Anyways, to some extent, I had an open mind and found nothing wrong with searching for answers — answers to all of life’s questions — or at least the questions that I knew about — mostly just the ones that involved me…

I was not hesitant to demand explanations from God, but at that time I never got any. So, I did not hesitate to look for such answers anywhere else and everywhere else. But as one song verse goes, “I was looking for love in all the wrong places.”

Today, the people I try to persuade are ones who, for one reason or another, have been locked into some philosophical or doctrinal position and/or had accepted one secular position or another. As I listened to them, I saw no life changing personal experiences. They used logic and reasoning, of course, but I heard nothing new. Worse, many experienced hurt and even were gravely injured by so-called Christians, pastors, or just life in general.

It is hard to get past pain — pain of any sort. Pain grabs our attention and often doesn’t let go.

We may ask, “Where was God while all this was happening to me?”

Nobody waits for an answer. We usually don’t really expect or even want one. Pain often gets us too angry to listen.

Nobody can blame anyone in that situation for not really wanting an explanation. The pain is more significant and has more force than can be understood by a stranger to such traumas. So, we don’t hesitate to search elsewhere in desperation, because the hurt demands answers.

So, when I attempt to persuade that Jesus is the answer, the response is often angry and even vituperative. I cannot get people to listen, let alone to turn the corner. Few people have any idea who I am, and for that reason alone, why should they take my advice?

I do understand why they take offense. Even Jesus admitted people would take offense at Him and for a variety of reasons.

Yes. People have their reasons.

So, I try to provide other reasons, better reasons, answers why I now believe in God, Jesus, and the Bible. I try to share what I have learned from them all. I open up to share my personal testimony, including my mistakes, my pain, my wrong turns, and how Jesus saved me and continues to save me from them all.

A person cannot experience the living God and certainly cannot begin to get answers they are desperate for, unless they start with self evaluation and an open mind. We can only start the process with a personal relationship with Jesus — which most Christian Churches today do not provide and never even teach or even mention! So, how do we start and where do we begin?

People often will not accept the dynamics of free will and its precipitating consequences — good or bad. (Maybe we do tend to take credit for the good ones though!) However, people instead are quick to blame God and/or other people or the circumstances into which they were born, blaming their parents, Society, etc. etc… Anyways, that is what I did.

So, what? News flash: life is full of challenges. How does trying to find who or what to blame help? How does that work out for anybody?

If your feet are stuck in the muck… What? Are you just going to complain about it? Want somebody to give you a hand? Or do you only want to find out who is to blame for the muck?

Nevertheless, this is what I chose to do: I called on God to save me and soon thereafter called on Jesus to come into my life. I had made a complete mess of my life. My feet were stuck deep in the muck. But Jesus immediately got me unstuck. He placed my feet on solid ground and started to make my life and everything surrounding it so much better. As I have been reading the Bible for over 50 years, I learn its practicality — not only ethereal insights but wisdom for practical living. As I approach reading the Bible prayerfully, God opens my understanding of the Scriptures, and where I discover myself contrary, I can ask for His help to change me from the inside, from in my heart and mind to outward pragmatic living.

Sure, I have made more mistakes, not listened, or forgot what I learned, but God is faithful, even when I am not. There are still unfortunate circumstances I have had to live through. But God has an abundance of strength and encouragement and perseverance to supplant my lack thereof. He will get you through, too… if you decide to let Him.

It’s up to us individually to decide to open the door to let Him in, to reach out and put our hand in His, or we can decide to reject the whole notion of God or the actuality that we are drowning and that He can rescue us… and actually wants to.

“For God so loved the world that He gave the only begotten Son, so that everyone believing in Him should not perish, but should have eternal life.” — John 3:16, Berean Literal Bible.