Life Together

I am a frustrating friend. I know that. But if you can fathom what seems impossible these days, it really just is what it is. 

See, I spent most of my formative years as the smartest person in the room. The smartest kid in the class. The one that everyone else was waiting to answer the questions for them. Feeling all the eyes on me - the teachers and my classmates alike - because they knew I knew. It was annoying, but it kept things moving. 

But the truth is that I've always been more curious than smart. I've always liked exploring the world around me, learning new things, looking from different angles, trying to see everything that I could see. Being the smartest kid in the class clouded that for awhile because I was also desperate to please and I knew what the "right" answer was, so I was quick to show both mastery and acceptability and to claim this as a virtue. 

As time went on, I began to understand that while I might sometimes be the smartest person in the room, I'm very seldom the wisest person in the room. And that's an important distinction. 

I'm very seldom the wisest because every single person has a different perspective based on their own experiences and wiring and vision for what's around them. And the minute that, as an adult, you think there is one "right" answer, you run up against someone who reads the question with a different emphasis. And now, not only is your answer not right, but it's worse than that: it's arrogant and insensitive and well, wrong. 

So I have been very deliberate in my maturing life about learning to see other perspectives, understand them, or at the very least, acknowledge that they exist and that there might be some outside of my own comprehensional ability. 

In a world that is increasingly black and white, I swirl in shades of grey. And that's frustrating for others. 

But it's not inauthentic. 

Twenty years ago, I took a class on group dynamics in college. As part of this class, we split off into small groups and took up hot-button issues with strong divides down the middle. Think "abortion" as one example...on a Christian campus, no less. And the task was simple: argue the topic, make valid points, attempt to see the other person's perspective, learn how to acknowledge a disagreement and maintain cordiality. 

A few minutes into the exercise, the professor got everyone's attention and said, "Okay, now switch sides." 

We all stared at her. She clarified, "Whichever side of the debate you were just arguing, take the other side and keep going...with the same partner." 

So we switched sides. And when the time expired, everyone in my little group looked at me and said, "We don't know which side you actually believe." Everyone knew where my partner really stood. There was chatter among the other groups about how hard it was to try to argue something they didn't really believe. 

Nobody could figure out where I really stood. 

Not because I don't have an opinion on the subject. I do. I believe there is a truth, a right and a wrong, a way that is God-pleasing to approach the matter. 

But I believe that the way we engage one another is more important to God. I mean, He said so. He said that was the thing that mattered most. Love God, love one another. Do this one another thing right. 

And this one another thing is not about being right or wrong, but being able to engage and to understand a perspective other than your own. It's about believing someone else is just as earnest as you are, even if you think they're wrong. It's being able to live in the grey when everyone is begging you to pick black or white. 

I believe that truth is real, but trueness always lies somewhere in the middle. 

I'm reminded of this this week. Another election has passed and there are celebrations and mourning, excitement and outrage, satisfaction and disbelief. And somehow, there are a whole bunch of persons - a wild majority, sadly - who seem to believe that an entire segment of the population showed up at the polls just to vote for failure. Just to make sure we all lose. 

Friends, nobody voted to destroy our society. Nobody. Nobody went to the polls and said to themselves, "I want this whole social experiment of being a community to fail." Everyone was looking forward at a future that actually, we largely agree on, and had their own perspective on how we get there. 

Black looks wrong if you believe what's white, and white looks wrong if you believe what's black and truth is, well, generally one or the other. It is. 

But trueness is always somewhere in the middle. It's always grey. It's always in the space where we have to get out of high-brow debates and back into the mess of living together. Of one anothering. 

That's the only space that truly matters. 

And it makes me a frustrating friend because this is the space I'm always going to live in. So...I'm sorry. Kind of. But I love you anyway. 

For real.