Not even three weeks into the school year, Azusa Pacific’s campus has already buzzed with conversation surrounding race and sexual identity and orientation. Whether it was at diversity training for student leaders or on the “door” where students post opinions, difficult issues are prevalent.
The reaction in the face of these issues for some, but not all, was argument and anger. As the weeks of school continue, it is essential that students drop this sense of argument and move toward a spirit of dialogue.
According to senior international business major Brian Jessup, Student Government Association president, “It’s not dialogue unless it’s for the betterment of both people, and if it’s anything other than that … it gets called ‘pushing a point.’”
Monday, Aug. 25, Jessup explained at Imago Dei, the diversity training for student leaders, that his brother told him not to “view conversation as competition.”
According to senior psychology major Brett Harrison, the difference between dialogue and debate is about the end goal.
“In arguments, it seems more often that people come in with an agenda or with a point they want to get across, and there is a winner and a loser and telltale signs that show who wins and who loses,” Harrison said.
“People succumb to the other person’s ideas or they push their ideas on to the other. But, with a dialogue, people are able to share their stories without hoping or expecting something from the other person in return. Both parties are able to hear each other and listen to each other without having a winner or loser.”
Ultimately, this means accepting that others will hold different opinions and that permanent disagreements will, can and should exist.
“It’s something that I don’t think college prepares us well for… to learn how to be comfortable disagreeing with people,” Jessup said. “I think we are so much into argumentation that we think that to have a conversation – to have a good one – means that by the end of it, we both agree with each other.”
Why does this matter? In the context of Christian community, there is a higher calling to treat people with more grace and respect.
Ephesians 4:2-6 says: “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord; one faith; one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”
Although there is a call to be unified as “one body,” that does not necessarily mean to be of one opinion and agree on everything. That would be an impossibility for Christians from every walk of life, nation, ethnicity, denomination or what-have-you to be in full agreement.
“Within a Christian community, and within the APU community, there’s a lot of disagreement, so it’s important just in general to have dialogue and not always want the other person to be on your side, but realize we can all just as humans be on the same side and disagree and learn how to coexist within that tension,” Harrison said.
For Jessup, this is part of what it means to be part of the Kingdom of God, which is often opposite of society’s expectations.
“I think that’s what it means to be the Church, … that we have this unrelenting commitment to loving one another, but that doesn’t mean that we need to agree politically or agree on such and such deal every single time,” Jessup said. “It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to talk about those things because if there was ever a place to talk about those things, it has to be here, but I think it’s a perfect example of the upside-down-ness of the Kingdom. We can disagree and be of like-mind and we can have different opinions and yet be unified.”
As conversations continue through this year about difficult topics, as such topics are guaranteed to come, it is vital that students, faculty, staff and administrators alike approach one another with grace and peace rather than with an attacking argument.
“Whether there’s an objective truth or not, I feel like being able to exist together and love one another is just so much more important than being right,” Harrison said.