Pointless Conversations Abound

I have always liked conversations involving to two taboos - religion and politics.  Heck, I wrote my thesis on political theology.  I also like philosophy  and history, so I'm a little more aware of what's going on in the background than many people (though no less susceptible to the same problems!). However, my energy begins to wane with conversations based in social media. 

Of late, the two big topics in my world have been Obama and Genesis.  These are two gigantic hot buttons in the American Christian world.  I tend to lean liberal both politically and theologically (with regards to interpretations of Genesis!), so I'm used to having to scrap for validation.  Most Evangelicals are Republican, nearly as many are literal creationists, and all of them seem utterly convinced they have the true Christian position on both counts; to be fair, most Christian Democrats think exactly the same thing.  It can be a bit wearing to have to defend any position, but this conversation usually evokes suspicion about your very character.

 While reading through a conversation on the blog of a well-respected Biblical Scholar, it finally clicked that the problem wasn't the topic of conversation at all.  The participants weren't talking past each other because they had come to different conclusions via the same process of rational analysis.  They're talking past each other because the words they're using don't even mean the same things to the other person.   

Our words and interpretive framework are all undergirded by philosophical presuppositions that make conversation virtually impossible.  Most of the time, we want exactly the same thing, but our methods of arriving at our goal are grounded in belief systems that are in conflict.  We all set up false dichotomies ("You don't believe the creation account is true, therefore you must not believe in the resurrection" or "You oppose universal healthcare, therefore you must not care about people") and viscerally react to what we think we hear rather than what's being said.

This is why a frontal assault on someone's ideology almost never works.