debate – Houghton STAR

By Christian Welker

I love to debate, sitting down with somebody who truly believes something I disagree with. I have spent hours sitting with friends, family, and even strangers on the internet, debating on all topics, from politics to religion, to what would happen if Time Travel was a reality.

However, it seems that as time passes, a debate has become less about exchanging ideas and more about beating your opponent in a shouting match. The “winners” of these debates are the people with a louder voice or more followers on their social media. This, combined with the echo chambers social media builds, which constantly feed people their opinions and views while blocking out alternative ones, makes it nearly impossible to share your idea without an argument and somebody feeling hurt at the end of the conversation. It seems we have lost the ability to debate.

The added tragedy to this loss is Christianity builds an echo chamber around itself and makes it difficult, if not impossible, to effectively show the light of Christ to the people around us. Nobody is going to believe that God is love if the way they are being told is by a man screaming in their face about sin and evolution.

I believe there are two leading causes of this new idea of debate. First are the social media echo-chambers that I mentioned before. These constantly affirm that your beliefs are correct while connecting other aspects of your life to them and making you see these opinions as your identity. The second is the idea that all debates need to have a loser. We defend our positions vehemently because we are afraid if we do not, the other side will “win the debate,” making our opinion, our view, and our identity wrong and, therefore, inferior.

This view is dangerous for several reasons. It pushes us apart from family, friends, and classmates who may have different opinions than us. We become convinced that those people are bad because they don’t share the same view that we do and we don’t want to associate with who we view as a “bad person.” We break away from them and find more people who agree with us on everything, going deeper into the echo chamber and making it even harder to hold a conversation with someone we view as different than us. In this process, it also becomes more likely that we become more extreme in our beliefs, vilifying those who disagree with us and eventually going so far as to view them as sub-human. These people become “heartless” or “too stupid to get it,” clear dividing lines are drawn, and crossing those lines becomes a traitorous act.

So what do we do? How can we break ourselves out of our echo chambers and connect with those we’ve begun to see as less than ourselves? Over the summer, while working at a Christian Bookstore, a coworker would always tell me to “Remember their hearts,” to remember that the other side is just as much of a human as you are. They don’t believe what they believe because they are evil or idiotic. They have just as much heart as you do, as much love, compassion, and care for others. Pastor Wes Oden at Houghton Wesleyan Church said during a recent sermon, “When we look at someone, we need to remember, they are a child of God, made in His image.” Being a child of God does not rely on being Republican or Democrat, Pro-Choice or Pro-Life, LGBTQ or Straight. Everyone is a child of God, no matter what. So remembering that is the first step to being able to communicate with the other side.

We also need to break out of our echo chambers and remember that these views don’t encapsulate everything we are. Go to subreddits or Instagram profiles with different opinions than you, talk to someone who disagrees with your beliefs, don’t argue, listen. Everyone has a reason for seeing the world as they do, and if we know why they think that way, their beliefs will likely become less foreign to us. Thoughts also grow and change over time. Therefore, believing that you’d lose yourself if you alter your beliefs or become friends with someone who disagrees does not make much sense. Debates can be used as an opportunity to grow your opinions and views of the world in a calm environment, as long as both parties are willing to discuss it with you with clear heads and level emotions.

Viewing a debate as an exchange of ideas instead of a fight for survival, removing yourself from echo chambers that make it hard to hear alternate opinions, and viewing the person you are talking to as a human being and a child of God instead of a heartless monster are ways that we as people can grow. We will grow our connections between people, our knowledge on the subject, and our own opinions and beliefs. While getting angry can seem inevitable, we can choose what to do with that anger, whether we lash out at our “opponent” or calm ourselves down to continue the conversation with our friend, family member, or classmate. Debating calmly and kindly will help shape your own mind and opinions and allow you to grow as a person. ★

L.I.F.E. Club Panel Disappoints

I was horrified when I first received the L.I.F.E. club email stating in big bold letters “Abortion: A Modern Day Holocaust?” that was accompanied by the feet of what appeared to be an infant. I was horrified not because of my views on abortion, but because of the way the e-mail presented the event. The email claimed to be a panel “discussion” yet the way information was presented did not suggest any “discussion” would occur. Instead the email suggested that one viewpoint would automatically dominate the event. In addition to my horror, we must realize that even in this small community; there are most likely people who have experienced the effects of abortion to one degree or another. Therefore I do not feel that we should abruptly equate our fellow sisters and brothers to Nazis. Regardless of the impressions I received from the email, I decided to attend, hoping that researched opinions and detailed thought would be respectfully presented.

Sadly my hope was, for the most part, in vain–the panel quickly veered in one direction and rarely slowed down to think about other avenues of opinion. However, though the conversation repeatedly traveled in one direction, I as well as fellow students, were very thankful to have Dean Jordan present. He continually inserted thought-provoking responses that were honest; reminding the students that there are not easily deduced answers when it comes to society’s issue of abortion. However, this was not as true of the other two speakers.

The male guest speaker was a Bible-thumper, who continually repeated kitschy catchy phrases such as, “We have the World View, and then we have the Word View” or “God is Scripture and Scripture is God.” I assure you, Scripture is not cut and dry. Issues dealing with morality are rarely-if ever- black and white. Yes John 1 does say, “In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” but the Bible speaks in metaphor. As one student at the panel pointed out, there are thousands of denominations within the Protestant Church alone: clearly believers do not commonly agree on many issues regarding the hermeneutics of scripture. In relation to this, Dean Jordan again pointed us to the important realization that the Bible never addresses abortion, but instead discusses the value of life as a theme prevalent within the Bible. We should approach abortion as intellectuals who can support opinions within secular communities, not just as believers who speak up in our small, faith-based town.

The female guest speaker reverted to a repeated tactic of statistical references throughout the discussion, and at one point admitted to looking up facts online recently to ensure she would have information to bring to the panel. Statistics work for initial effect, but we have heard them before and we will hear them again. When bombarded with statistics, one does not often come away with new thoughts to dwell on, but rather one comes away with a jumble of disorienting facts that are hard to process. Also this guest speaker was a Catholic and I, like other students, expected the discussion to at least briefly deal with the differences between Catholic and Protestant viewpoints on contraception, but this was never formally addressed. Instead, references were made to the differing thoughts, but time was not devoted to discussing this rift within the Church.

Lastly, the discussion was not clearly focused from the beginning. I expected the first question to be a starting point that dealt with the definition of when life truly starts. This question was only addressed at the end, when a student asked for individualized definitions from each panelist.

Overall I was disappointed. The issue of abortion is regarded as a very heated discussion both inside the church and within the secular world. Students should experience a discussion that holds differing opinions respectfully presented in a way that stimulates an individual’s thought instead of staunching it. Students who are not encouraged to carefully think about issues will not be ready to confidently present his/her own thoughts when given the chance later in life.

Next time the L.I.F.E Club creates a panel discussion, I suggest they bring in a pro-choice opinion–there are academics in our community who hold this view. I also propose they find more readily equipped panelists to argue each side. This campus also holds people who have devoted time and energy into Pro-Life viewpoints through continual research from both a Christian perspective and a secular perspective. Once again, I was extremely glad that Dean Jordan had a voice in this discussion, but I wish the panel had been better prepared and more diverse.