The Rules of Civil Conversation
I don’t like arguments or debates: they are less about seeking truth or understanding and more about winning.
If I spend my time learning about what someone believes, then I might learn something that I didn’t know before. And even if my goal is to persuade them of something (which it sometimes is), how can I do that if I don’t know where they’re coming from?
I would rather understand someone’s position and help them understand mine rather than win some system of points or whatever that artificially declares me right and them wrong.
After all, can I say that I have a complete understanding of what is true? That wherever you and I disagree, I am always right and you are wrong? That even the things I believe the most strongly are without error? That takes a level of ego that I do not want!
Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
1 Corinthians 13:9-10 (NLT)
I am confident in what I believe. I am also confident that I’m wrong about some of it. How much? I hope only a little, but I don’t really know. Regardless, I want to spend my time learning where I could be wrong so that I can keep growing closer to matching my beliefs with reality.
Shoot, sometimes having a calm discussion with someone with a different viewpoint helps me to develop my own! They help me find the holes in what I believe. I can then work to either fill in the holes or change my beliefs.
If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
Douglas Adams
That’s why I want to follow the Rules of Civil Conversation. If you and I disagree, that’s great! Let’s talk about it, challenge each other, and learn from each other. You are not my enemy because we disagree, even if that disagreement is massive! It just means that we both have the opportunity to grow.