Jun 2024
This is an essay for me. Perhaps it will also be useful for you, too.
I just read a tweet between two grown adults –– both educated, both Christian, perhaps both wise to some degree –– arguing about whether the Bible condones slavery.
To no one's surprise, the conversation went poorly.
The truth is that a substantive discussion on slavery in the Bible is impossible on Twitter.
Imagine if those same two people had the same conversation while sitting at a dinner table with a few friends. They would certainly not say the same things and they may even find that they have more agreement than they expected.
Many of the ideas which matter most in life –– questions of God and eternity and identity and sexuality and grief and loss and poverty and justice –– do not fit in a tweet. There is simply too much wrapped up in our humanness, in our bodies, in our histories, to even begin to have that conversation on social media.
We must be prepared to say "this conversation is best had in person, can we get together?"
May our reasonableness be visible to everyone.