Coffee over Pie Holes

Soooo, i wrote a post with my reflections on the Passion worship event on the weekend as most of you know and BOOM! Oh and then there was the one i wrote titled, ‘Sodomy: A South African Love Story’ which was a “great post, but please change the title because it’s awkward having that on my wall” and that exploded on The Warehouse wall.

The piece i shared on Equality, Equity and Reality didn’t get much of a tremor because people were too nervous to read anything i posted by then, as didn’t the piece i put out on Choosing to be Colourblind, and then most people avoided the Phil Potter question piece because they thought it was a trap [It was! Well, no, not really, except for the fact that honestly answering the question – So do the white population feel like they have sacrificed anything of real significance in the last ten or fifteen years? – didn’t feel like it had many happy feeling places to go.

And there was a mixture of responses.

# I had coffee in my home with my mate Wayne and my mate Angus to talk more about some of the things i’d written [To be fair it was the first proper time Wayne and i had really spoken properly cos we’ve been virtual friends for a while and i’ve been stalking him online, and Angus and i last hung out and wrestled with what it meant to love Jesus but struggle with some of the actions of the church almost 15 years ago [2002, i think he said]

# I was cheered on and liked and RTed and had my posts shared [which in the case of the Passion piece probably helped gain momentum on the backlash so thanks a lot all of you. Ha!]

# I had my faith in God questioned, and my motivation at attending a worship event questioned.

# I was called judgemental. A lot. My favourite was by one lady who said the ONLY piece she agreed with in the whole post was the past where i said people were going to probably see me as being judgemental. That’s literally the only part of the whole piece she agreed with [despite the various parts where i had spoken about really positive aspects of the event, such as people celebrating their love of God, the one worship song that moved me to tears, the last point of Louie Giglio’s preach about the dying/finished’ness of SELF, which i thought was a spot on message for the crowd to hear]. That made me smile.

# I was questioned and challenged and disagreed with [All good stuff, although not necessarily all stuff i agreed with, but good that people stood up for what they believed and felt convicted about]

# I was told to shut up. This part will probably continue to get airplay because it was so great. Someone literally wrote ‘For God’s sake’ not meaning it as blasphemic words [which i think it kinda might have been] Shut Your Cake Hole.

# Someone responded with “Someone get that man a gatsby!” and the someone was DZ Eazy and we caught up on the streets of Gatesville on a Tuesday evening late at night eating the best gatby’s in town outside Golden Dish.

HOW TO RESPOND

Yesterday, i was called a ‘cocksucker’ on the Twitterer, because i made good on my promise to step into moments of racism when i witnessed them [this person had used the ‘K’ word on the Twitterer]. That is an easy moment to read as you can quickly discern that this is not a person wanting to learn or ready to engage and worth wasting any more time on in that sense. [Every person is worth ‘wasting time on’ in the greater scheme of things, but not in terms of hoping to get somewhere significant with no relationship.

i thought it might be helpful to share a few ideas on how we can respond well when we see something online that we disagree with or that makes us angry, knowing that we all are likely to get it wrong sometimes [i certainly do] and it would be great if you have anything to add, but here are some quick thoughts.

• Make Sure You Are Seeing What You Are Seeing: Lesson one in the How to Live a Happy Life Online course none of us gets to take is that the written words struggled to convey tone. Sure, when you are ready the word ‘cocksucker’ or ‘shut your pie hole’ it may be a little easier to infer tone… but a lot of the time it actually depends on your mood, your relationship with the person who posted, the language you both use and a number of other factors. So a Healthy First Step is to Ask A Clarifying Question. “Are you saying that you thought everyone who attended the Passion Worship event is a racist who hates black people?” No. No i am not. Sometimes we hear a message that was not the one that was intended and while the onus is on the presenter to present their message in the best way to have it understood, once you have the complexity of the whole internet’s worth of people possibly taking a look at it, it is impossible to get your message across clearly to every person. So make sure you heard what you think you did. And then move on from there.

• If you disagree strongly with something, try and clarify for yourself what you are disagreeing with. Sometimes when you read a piece and get angry, it can be helpful to try and understand what you are angry with. Was i angry because of the words they used? Was i angry because i felt it implied something about me or someone I care about? Was i angry simply because i think differently on the matter? Or was i angry because that jerk cut me off in the traffic five minutes ago and i arrived at my desk angry and this has nothing to do with this piece at all. If you can state to yourself why you are angry or disagree or think differently, then it is going to be very helpful to the person you engage with in terms of understanding where you are coming from.

•  Don’t make it personal. If you read something and disagree with what someone has written, then engage with what has been written. Don’t go straight to questioning the person’s motivation or their heart for a particular issue or anything that is not directly related to the piece. That is the quickest way to shut down an engagement. Once you’ve ascertained that they meant what you thought they meant, perhaps begin with something like, ‘I read what you wrote and I really see it a different way because [list reasons]. Do you have any thoughts on that?’ i know i will respond a lot better to someone who invites me to engage with them [as many of you did on the Passion piece – some people disagreed REALLY STRONGLY with what i had written but responded with absolute respect, questioning, sharing their ideas and so on and it made me want to listen and try and understand their point of view and see if i thought mine needed changing]. An invitation, question or sharing of a different idea goes a long way to beginning healthy engagement. Starting a response with only the words “Brett Fish Anderson Shut up!” immediately says to me that you want to let me know that i made you angry, but you aren’t interested in engaging with me at all on the matter. That is so completely unhelpful in terms of moving forward.

• Explore the Inbox Route. A large number of people did that. While i am a huge cheerleader of the idea that at times a public message needs to be responded to publicly [Jesus and the Pharisees, Jesus and James and John wanting co-thrones, Paul and Peter with the hypocrisy with the jews] there is also the example given in Matthew 18 which is also really helpful a lot of the time: First step is to approach the person who has offended you one on one. If they don’t listen to you then go back with two or three people you trust. If they refuse to listen to them then take the matter to the church [the bigger body of people]. That is a helpful way of dealing with things for christians or non christians alike. Also really helpful if you’re not 100% sure you understood them and want to clarify. Two of the pastors who were on the stage at Passion did that with me and we had some healthy conversation.

• Choose Coffee over Pie Holes. Some of my best conflict – and let’s be honest here, i don’t know a lot of people who actually enjoy conflict – despite what you may believe, i really don’t, but i’m not afraid of it, i have found it so completely valuable in terms of learning and growing throughout my life. People who shy away from conflict tend to stay the same. What good is that? i find Social Media a great place to start fights, but not the best of places to finish them. So often when i have been in a huge disagreement with someone online and it starts to look like it’s getting out of hand or personal or not going anywhere, i will take it offline – “Come and have coffee with me.” “Come over for a meal with me and tbV”. “Let’s go hang out at Golden Dish late at night and wrestle this out over a gatsby.” Those times, when people have taken me up on that, have led to some of my strongest and best friendships with people actually. Because when you hang out with me, you are likely to realise [hopefully] that i’m not actually a dick. i am someone who loves God passionately and loves people passionately and is trying to pursue kingdom things, that place a huge emphasis on looking out for the poor and marginalised. After i’ve responded patiently and graciously to 75 comments on the same thing and then i see yours and respond with sarcasm or dismissal or anger it may just have been because i was tired or frustrated or because things were starting to catch up with me [that doesn’t make it okay, but hopefully more understandable]. So take it offline. Break bread with me and let’s really try listen to each other and hear what the other person is saying. And you know what – we don’t have to agree. We can leave a conversation both still strongly believing the things we believe and hopefully the fact that we stopped and listened and really tried to understand the other side of the argument might even have strengthened our beliefs in our own.

• Test the spirits. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil. That sounds quite religiousy and it should, because it’s from the bible, in Thessalonians, but it is still true for everyone. Listen to what is being said and test it against the truth [for followers of Jesus that means holding it up to Scripture, the Bible] and IF IT IS TRUE then hold on to it with all your life BUT IF IT IS NOT TRUE then feel absolutely okay with discarding it. There were people who absolutely raved about my Passion article and there were some who absolutely hated the whole thing. But you know what my favourite responses were? They went something like this: Brett, i read your post and i agreed with some of what you had to say, but i also disagreed with a bunch. You know why i love that response so much? Because it shows you have engaged your brain. Jesus told us that the greatest commandment was to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul and strength and we love those things and cheer them on and make bumper stickers and cheesy Facebook covers with pictures of swans on them… but we too often miss that He also said that we should Love the Lord our God with all of our Minds [and our neighbour as ourselves]. i strongly believe God wants us to engage our brains. He wants us to think and reason and wrestle. Where a lot of christians come unstuck on this one though is by not knowing their bibles well enough. This week i saw someone write the words, ‘Jesus told us to forgive and forget’ and i immediately jumped in and challenged that and it didn’t quite end in a friendly gatsby. Jesus told us to forgive absolutely. But we are not called to forget except in terms of not holding it against someone. How much greater if we have knowledge of a crime that someone committed against us and refuse to hold it against them… than if we developed some sort of spiritual amnesia and didn’t actually know they had done anything at all? Test what you hear against the authority you hold to be true and cling to what is good and let go of what is bad [Most messages probably have a little of both – we need to be discerning]

• This is the last one and i think it is HUGE: Not every message i speak is addressed to you. i write a blog post on the need for us to help the poor and someone who pays the woman who cleans their house a living wage [not a minimum one] and who has helped put her three children through college and who volunteers twice a week at a shelter for abused women, jumps on and shouts at me for suggesting she doesn’t help the poor… No, that post was not for you. That post was for people who are living super comfortably and not doing anything to help the poor, and who pay the people who work for them the absolute lowest they can get away with and don’t treat them with respect. Not every message i post is for you. Listen carefully to the ones that are, and as with the point above, let go of the ones that are not [tag your friends who they are for in them]. i have shared messages on being married and on being single [while it can actually be super helpful for the single people to read the married ones and vice versa, they are not specifically for you and so maybe don’t read those, or read them to understand the people in your life who are in those places.

i hope you found that helpful.

We are all just trying to figure out this life thing and it feels quite complicated at the moment and that’s okay, but let’s try do it together. i get it wrong sometimes [and sometimes a lot] but i don’t start out my day ever trying to be a jerk. i am hoping that my gift and my platform and my words will ultimately be used to challenge and change and encourage and inspire both those who read them, and of course myself, and it is when you engage with them [on social media, in the comments section – seriously, come hang out and let’s create a community of learning there and in my inbox] that i have the chance to learn and be encouraged and challenged and changed and inspired.

Above all, let’s try and get this Kindness thing a lot more right, whether or not we agree with each other. You can buy the coffee.