I have a friend who makes pens on a lathe. I have another friend who makes pens by hand carving. Both make pens that work. Often they critique each other's pens, but they don't talk about the different processes they use to make the pens. The one who uses the lathe does not understand why the hand carver's pens use such "boring" wood colors (it is because some woods are softer and easier to carve by hand). What is overlooked is that the process drives how the pens will look.
Wood carving
Photo by Dominik Scythe on Unsplash
Both styles of pens are different, but they work to achieve the goal of writing. Some of the pens are more comfortable to hold than others and some are more stylized than others, but every pen puts ink on the page.
Within Christianity we like to critique each other's positions, but we don't critique the processes that we use to get to these positions. One side cannot understand why another person would take such a position, so we try to change their position. The issue is that unless we change the process by which we come to these decisions, then we will not be able to change the positions.
Pointing to a position and then arguing for or against it misses the point of talking about the process used to arrive at that position.
I am tired of talking and listening to positions. I desire to talk and hear about process. Talking about positions is less interesting to me than how you arrived at that position. Because if we know how we arrived at the position, then we have a clue to how to invite each other to move from that position.
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Rev. Jason Valendy
The Rev. Jason Valendy, along with his wife the Rev. Estee Valendy, serves as co-pastor of Saginaw United Methodist Church in Saginaw, Texas. He blogs at JasonValendy.net, from which this post is republished with the author's permission.