Bad Table Manners

“I hate potatoes!”  “I don’t like cheese!”  “I can’t stand soup!” 

These and many other bold declarations are common place in my home around dinner time.  My children love all things dramatic and rather than making a statement about a specific item they are worried may appear on that night’s menu, they prefer making a broad statement about each major food group.  I have to remind them that included in the category of potato, are such dinnertime greats as French fries and mashed… you guessed it, potatoes.  Also, that included in cheese are many Nichols family favorites such as parmesan cheese, Baby Bells, and macaroni and cheese.  The soup they are claiming that they hate, even though they seem to hate the name “chicken noodle soup”, is the same beloved soup as their favorite “tummy soup”.  This same logic can go the other way as well.  When I ask how they are liking school they may say, “it’s great”.  When I push for more information than the ever so informative two-word response they have supplied I learn that Tammy kept picking on them during class, they got in trouble for not completing their homework and outside recess got cancelled because it was too cold and they had to sit quietly inside.  Maybe mixed in to that day there may have been that new friend they made, an opportunity to laugh with old friends on the bus, and an A on that spelling test.  They were able to take all of the day’s information in and narrow it down to one semi accurate descriptor.  “It was great”.

We chuckle when we see our kids make sweeping statements about the types of food that they will eat for dinner not realizing that they regularly consume the very foods that, in their minds, make them ill.  We press for more reflective thought when our kids get off the bus and give a one-word summary response to what must have been a very complicated day for them to take in.  In reality, this type of categorizing is not unique to just children.  I hear people make these sorts of statements all of the time.  “I don’t really like going to the movies”.  For some that may mean that they don’t like how much movie theaters are charging, or maybe they don’t like crowds, or maybe it is as detached to the actual movie experience that their dislike of the movies is that they don’t like getting out of the house and would rather rent a movie.  Our brains are not so far removed from Cave Man logic and speech.  Our brain narrows it down to, “Movie bad”.  Usually it is as innocent as our brain saying we don’t like sushi, movie theaters, museums or reading Non-Fiction.  One thing that can happen with our brain’s sweeping judgment is that we may never experience the joy of good sushi, what it’s like to see the new Star Wars movie with a room full of fellow nerds, catch the latest traveling mummy exhibit at the local museum or read from the perspective of those who have traveled into space.  While it is a travesty to miss out on such amazing gifts, it isn’t really harming anyone else.  The times that we really need to push back against that evolutionary impulse to categorize and compartmentalize is when our sweeping judgments inflict harm on others. 

I am in no way free of responsibility and participation in this type of thought pattern.  I claim full guilt and responsibility.  It is much easier to say “white evangelicals are destroying the church’s witness” than to name the many loud and obnoxious leaders of churches that I see on Twitter and in the news who are the people that are bringing me to that decision.  I know that in that “white evangelical” group are many fantastic people who love God and their neighbor.  By making that statement, I have shut the door to future conversations with those people and, because I still have cave brain, I even see those people in a certain negative light before that conversation can even begin.  On the other side, I see people on Facebook saying “I can’t have a conversation with those liberals because they just want to steal Christmas, steal our guns, and let everyone in to our country without asking questions”.   The reality is that I would love to have a one on one conversation with any person who really wants to know what I think and why on any of those topics.  Also, there is so much diversity in thought across the “liberal” spectrum on all of those issues that there is no way that each person’s convictions could be boiled down to one descriptor.  Cave brain gets the best of us and we slowly lose the faces of people that we know may be found in the oppositions tribe.  I am no longer Matt that you grew up with, worshiped with, worked with or share family blood lines with.  I am Matt the “libtard”.  You are no longer my relative, my friend, the person who I shared life with in some time and space.  You are my enemy. 

We have to start asking our brain more questions.  When we hear our brain react to Facebook posts or news reports with sweeping statements, we have to engage in critical thinking.  Just like how when my kids say that they don’t like potatoes I have to get them to come to the realization that they do really like some potatoes but they don’t like baked potatoes, we have to challenge ourselves to be more specific with our frustrations.  I am not angry with ALL white evangelicals.  I am angry with people that give a free pass to bigotry, those who remain silent while people groups are excluded from our worship gatherings, those engaged in silencing and discounting the voices of women in the church (this list could go on for some time so I’ll stop there).  Even then, I am not angry at Tom or Harry, I am angry with those behaviors.  When I move from the sweeping emotions of “those darn white evangelicals” to the particulars of “Tom”, I have the opportunity to engage with an actual human being.  If you are frustrated with all liberals you can’t engage with the global label of liberal but you can engage, respectfully, with me.

So, how do we change our minds about anything in a healthy way?  Our minds are constantly being conditioned by an inner dialogue that is really just trying to streamline the thought process so we don’t have to use so much mental energy with every decision we make.  We need to be able to say we want this and don’t want that without a 10-minute inner debate.  If we didn’t have opinions about anything the internal tension would be exhausting.  At the same time, changing our mind about something without any honest reflection seems disingenuous and may even be done for the wrong reasons.  In addition to the question of how we change our mind about anything, is the question of how we have opinions and beliefs in a way that keeps in mind our propensity for dualistic thinking. Let me offer a few simple thoughts and questions that may help us all to honestly reflect when faced with anything we have a strong aversion to.

1)Have you tried it?  This is the question I ask my kids when they say they don’t like something. I think we should ask ourselves this question about anything we are saying we don’t like.  With food that is a simple question, if the answer is no and there is no health reason that you have not tried it, please expand your experience and try the stinking food.  It admittedly gets more complicated when we are talking about behaviors and beliefs.  There may be a behavior that you know you will not engage in and that is good it is healthy even, in some cases.  In those scenarios the question and answer to it is no less useful.  The fact you have not tried a thing, experienced a way of being or believing should lead you to humility.  Simply knowing that your opinion does not come from a place of experience but from outside judgment will help you to identify the limits of your ability to understand.

2)Why don’t you like it?  This is the second question I ask my kids when they say they don’t like something.  If they have tried whatever they say they don’t like they need to be able to identify what it was about the item they didn’t like.  If they can articulate that the food was too spicy, the texture made them sick or even that the crust of the bread cut the roof of their mouth, I can tell that they have thought about their dislike of something on a deeper level.  It is no longer that they won’t eat French fries because they don’t like potatoes.  We must look at our opinions and ask ourselves why.  Do we hold a political opinion because we have always just thought that way?  Do we only read and hear opinions of people within our own tribe?  Did we have a bad experience in the past that helped form our opinion about something?  I have heard so many times where a person won’t eat or drink something because the last time they had it, they got sick.  We know in our minds that it wasn’t that food item that made us sick but we have drawn that connection. It’s our brains way of protecting us from getting sick again.  We need to be aware that our minds also work that way when it comes to beliefs about people groups.  Like I said earlier, you may have had a bad experience with someone from another political party or people group.  You just can’t let that one bad experience be the only thing informing your current opinion.  Asking ourselves the question, “Why don’t I like it?” will help bring to light that past experience that is clouding our decision making process.

3)Let me enjoy it.  I think the only thing worse than my kids saying they hate everything placed in front of them for dinner is when they tell me how disgusting it is as the rest of the family is eating it.  If they have tried it, engaged with why they didn’t like it in a thoughtful way, I am ok with them eating something else.  I draw the line when, as a fork full of brussel sprouts is making its way to my mouth, I hear a chorus of “EEEEEWWWWWs” erupt from the butter noodle eating crowd.  We can have opinions about things that are different from each other and still gather at the same dinner table.  My kids have to understand that I came to my opinion about brussel sprouts by engaging my mind in the same way I asked them to.  I just came to a different opinion and that is ok.  We don’t have to agree but we do have to respect one another if we are going to share table fellowship. 

In reality, if there is any hope of a unified church and greater society at large, we have got to do better when it comes to our opinions and beliefs.  We have strong opinions about things that we don’t really understand.  We have strong beliefs that we guard from any thoughtful reflection because we are afraid that if we really engaged that part of our mind our beliefs may actually change.  We must create room for thoughtful reflection and compassionate dialogue about differing opinions and beliefs if we are going to live together in peace.  And ultimately, in the end, we have to respect someone who comes to a different conclusion than us and not shout, “EEEEWWWWW” at the dinner table.  The Lord’s Table is larger than we can imagine and the food is both diverse and delectable.  Let’s not ruin the feast with our desire to make our opinions heard over everyone else’s.  The onus is not on another guest at the table conforming to our beliefs but on all of us seeking to understand the other.