The Role of Experience in Shaping our Convictions

Three weeks from today voters all over the country will take to the polls to elect a new President and a host of other public officials. In Minnesota, along with close to another dozen states, we will also have the opportunity to vote in a public referendum to change the constitution of our state so that it defines marriage as an estate solely between one man and one woman.

Not surprisingly, this has occasioned impassioned rhetoric on both sides. This debate echoes, emulates, and informs similar conversations occurring in the church. I understand the passion in these conversations, knowing they stem from deep convictions about the Bible, authority, and human sexuality, and I have tried to facilitate them in several congregations in a way that invites honest and respectful dialogue. Toward this end I’ve tried to articulate a Lutheran understanding of Scripture and suggested various frames by which we may read the Bible on this issue.

All of this I’ve done from the conviction that this issue, while tremendously important, should nevertheless divide Christians against themselves. That is, whatever strong feels we may have, whatever convictions we may feel at stake, yet this issue – in my opinion – does not trump one’s confession of Christ as the hallmark of Christian fellowship. And in each congregation I’ve worked with I’ve therefore asked folks to take a moment and identify in their minds someone in their congregation that they respect and know to be a faithful disciple of Christ and yet who disagrees with them on this issue.

The result is usually powerful, moving participants from the rhetoric of “agreeing to disagree” to recognizing that we have significant relationships with people who see these matters differently. Most of us have ambivalence in these situations: we want people we respect and care for to agree with us with regard to our significant convictions. When this doesn’t happen, we must either write off the people with whom we disagree or find a new way to negotiate what our sense of faithfulness is. Given this choice between meaningful relationships and absolute certainty or ideological litmus tests for faithfulness, most people choose their relationships. This doesn’t, let me be clear, mean that people change their mind. Quite frankly, that’s rarely the case in the situations in which I’ve worked and actually not my goal. Rather, I want us to live into the tension of being faithful Christians in a complicated world with a modicum of grace and measure of trust in the Lord we all confess.

A second conviction I share is that our personal experience makes a difference. In fact, usually our personal experience – or lack thereof – makes the difference. Good experiences and bad ones shape our outlook. Numerous experiences or no experiences shape our convictions. And when people do change their minds on this or some similarly emotionally-charged conviction, it is rarely because of more information and almost always because of some additional experience.

And so as we approach the vote on marriage in a few weeks, and as our congregations continue to discuss and struggle with this issue, I very much hope that people on both sides of this issue can admit and own that their experiences have shaped their views and thereby find it easier to recognize that the distinct experiences of those on the other side of the fence have shaped those persons as well. Many of us would like to think that theology is above human experience and our convictions are for this reason “pure.” But when we imagine that we – and our theology – can escape the tussle of human experience unaffected, we tend to slide too quickly from discernment and conviction to judgment and condemnation. But if we can imagine that someone with very different experiences than we have had therefore may have good reason to frame things differently, we can engage them with respect. This doesn’t mean we’ll change our mind, but it does mean we’re more likely to honor them as children of God.

Toward this end, I’m posting a video today about one person’s experience and the difference it made in him. Produced by the travel-services company Expedia, it chronicles Artie Goldstein’s trip across the country to attend the wedding of his daughter to another woman. As he shares, it’s not a trip he wanted to make, but it’s one that affected him deeply and it serves as a good reminder that experience, as well as religious conviction, together inform our belief and practice. I don’t post it to change minds but rather to open hearts to recognize that we’re all on a journey and the past experiences we’ve had shape profoundly the future steps we may take.

Notes: 1) If you are receiving this post by email, you may need to click here to watch the video.
2) Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for pointing this video out to me.