Reframing the Reference

Abiding in Hope

by

Aug. 8, 2024

I used to be a team lead at Target in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Team lead is kind of like a department manager, but I oversaw several departments: toys, electronics, seasonal, automotive. They gave me pretty much all the loud and messy areas. The thing about the seasonal section that I hated the most, was that from the early Christmas set in September[i] through the end of February, after we take down the Valentine’s Day set, glitter was everywhere. I think the comedian Demetri Martin summed it best when he said “Glitter is the herpes of crafting supplies. Once you get it on you, you’ll have it on you for a while.” For half the year I would go home covered in glitter.

If you’ve read any of my articles or had a conversation with me, you’ve probably figured out that humor is my favorite coping mechanism. I tried several times to use my sparkly attire for comedic purposes. My personal favorite was when I opened an early Christmas set box and red glitter exploded all over me. I looked at my crew and announced “Look! I’m Ziggy Stardust!” and promptly started singing David Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars” album in its entirety. As a fan of classic rock, I found this hysterical. I was alone in that opinion because nobody else even chuckled!

A few days later, another glitter bomb happened, and I was the primary casualty. This time I started belting out Glen Campbell’s “Like a Rhinestone Cowboy,” and my crew laughed so hard that some of them had to sit down. I was so relieved! You see, I was worried that I might not be funny, but then I realized that the problem was that they didn’t listen to good music!

Even though I think most people can agree that Glen Campbell is not that great, the real issue was not the quality of music, but the cultural frame of reference I was speaking to. There are not a lot of prog-rockers in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but everyone there has been exposed to near-terminal doses of old Country/Western music. When I adjusted the frame of reference I was speaking to, the crew got the joke.

The APA defines the frame of reference as “the set of assumptions or criteria by which a person or group judges ideas, actions, and experiences. A frame of reference can often limit or distort perception, as in the case of prejudice and stereotypes.”[ii] These criteria are set by the culture, the person’s experiences, or even just the context of the moment. Our frame of reference has a large, unconscious impact on how we interpret the world around us.

For example, my wife and I are originally from South Dakota. We spent twelve years in Iowa, and we frequently saw bumper stickers with an outline of the state of Iowa with the word “Native” in the middle. To our frame of reference, “native” is synonymous with “indigenous.” We found it really unsettling when we saw that the drivers of these cars were always white. In my twelve years in Iowa, I only met one indigenous person, and he was from Rapid City, SD. Now, there is nothing racist or problematic about those bumper stickers, but to our frame of reference, it was pretty jarring to see the reality of the driver differ so greatly from our expectations.

Conflict of broken frames

A lot of conflict happens when people are talking about different things but think they’re on the same page. A congregation member of mine shared the story about how for the first year of his marriage, he got in trouble for never doing the dishes. He did the dishes, he washed them, dried them, and put them away, but his wife would get mad at him for not doing the dishes. After having that battle repeatedly, his wife finally shared the expectation that clearing off the counter and wiping the stove was part of doing the dishes, and he hadn’t realized that was part of the task. In her family, that just was; in his family, it just wasn’t.

I believe that the recent split in The United Methodist Church happened because so many of us were speaking from one frame of reference to a completely different frame of reference, and just didn’t realize it. Seven or eight years ago I was at a missions workshop. On a break, I started a discussion with a colleague that went on to disaffiliate. He came from a different faith tradition than United Methodist, and he just didn’t understand why we were wasting too much time talking about missions when we needed to be focusing on the work of the church: saving souls.

 \Right then I knew we had a radically different frame of reference. He thought that mission work, while not bad, should be secondary to evangelism and reaffirmations of faith. In his worldview, it doesn’t matter if we feed people; going to hell on an empty stomach isn’t any better than going to hell on a full stomach. He understood the reality of local church ministry; there is only so much money, manpower, and volunteer hours to go around. We need to be better stewards of our resources and focus on the mission of saving souls through evangelism in his view.

From my worldview, the thought of "saving souls" is ridiculous. I can’t do that. My church can’t do that. Only Jesus can do that. [iii] At the very least, I refuse to be crucified for the new members class I have coming up. The best the church can do is make disciples of Jesus Christ, and mission work in the world is an extension of that discipleship.

I’m glad I got to have that conversation with him because it gave me a solid frame of reference for the next several years as that group slowly left The United Methodist Church. I was able to frame their words and actions in such a way that it made sense to me. I still fundamentally disagree with his perspective, but it’s easier not to hate somebody if you understand them.

The entire country is struggling with a framing problem

Why did the Founding Fathers rebel against England? The old battle cry of “No taxation without representation,” comes to mind. If you ask one group of Americans, they say it was because of taxation. The King wanted too much money, and George Washington had had enough and decided to kick Cornwallis out! There is a strong correlation between people who believe we were founded over a taxation dispute and people who complain about the taxes they currently pay. They frame their current reality onto our nation’s history.

Of course, if you ask a different group of Americans, they will tell you the issue was representation. The tax burden the King put upon the colonies was not too onerous, but the issue was being forced to pay the tax without having any say on the policy. Again, there is a strong correlation here between people who are currently underrepresented projecting their current reality onto history.

Look at every major wedge issue we are struggling with, and it goes back to the individual’s frame of reference. For example, the conflict over modern policing goes back to a frame of reference. As a middle-class white man, my only interactions with the police have been when I’ve done something dumb (speeding or noise complaints in my younger days) when I’ve needed help, or at Thanksgiving (one of my best friends and my brother-in-law are police officers). I have a very positive frame of reference. But my Black and Indigenous friends have had several negative encounters, unwarranted stops, invasive questions, and searches of their bodies and vehicles that bordered on illegal. When speaking from one frame of reference to another, statistics, personal anecdotes, and “common sense” [iv] will not translate.

How do we reframe?

Before we discuss that, ask yourself “Do I want to understand people or persuade people?” If you’re looking for persuasion techniques, I really have none for you. I wish I did! Some frames of reference are just wrong and hurtful. I wish I had the knowledge and power to speak into those perspectives and change them, but I don’t. The best we can hope for is to understand them, and then we can better engage with them.

To better understand people with a different frame of reference, I’m going to crib a couple answers from a Counseling Tutor website.[v]

The first step is understanding that we aren’t all coming from the same place. We might think we’re on the same page, we might be using the same words, but the meaning and context of the conversation might be radically different.

The first time I ever served communion was at Fairburn United Methodist Church. I asked them how they did communion, and they said “Oh, the regular way.” Now I always attended medium to large churches. To me, the "regular way" was cubes of cut bread and shot glasses of Welch's grape juice. To them, "regular" meant all 10 of them stood in a line at the altar, got handed some bread, then drank from the common cup.

You are all with me on this one, right? That is not the "regular" way in The United Methodist Church! Come that Sunday, there was about 15 minutes of awkwardness as we all reframed what we thought of as "regular." If we all took a moment to consider that we might be talking about different things… it probably would still have been awkward, I would have found a way! But it probably wouldn’t have been as bad.

The second thing is to seek understanding and be authentically curious. Ask questions, even if they seem ridiculously simple or redundant! I have never met a person who didn’t want to talk about their worldview to somebody who was genuinely interested. I believe that open curiosity can heal a lot of wounds in this world.

Finally, try to speak in their framework. If you can speak on their level, understand their cultural assumptions, and put them to work, then you’ll be able to establish a deeper connection with them. This might feel phony, or mocking, but think more like being exploratory. You’re trying to establish a connection to a worldview different from your own, so you’ll have to explore the meaning and wording of this new world. If you screw up, they’ll see it as endearing, that you’re trying to connect to them on their level. Unless of course, you’re talking to teenagers. Then, to quote Dante, “abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

This is an election year. Many of us are in battle mode; we want to either persuade or crush all who think differently than we do! The temptation to speak inauthentically to other frames of reference is very strong, but if we are going to be a connected and connectional church, we need to try to better understand each other so we can better speak to each other. 

[i] GROSS. Advent is time enough to get ready for Christmas. 

[ii] https://dictionary.apa.org/frame-of-reference

[iii] Did that? Is doing that? Will one day do that? The verb tense changes on your Christology and Eschatology, but in the end, that job is for Jesus.

[iv] In my experience, 100% of the people who talk about “common sense” are completely blinded by their own bias. 

[v] https://counsellingtutor.com/

The Rev. Nate Mason is pastor of Discovery United Methodist Church in Chanhassen, Minnesota. "Abiding in Hope" is a spiritual encouragement ministry of the Iowa Annual Conference where he previously served.