Persuasion

Sharing a Christian worldview with others can often create tense situations. Especially when we are talking with friends and family who do not share our views.

A "Profile" article in The New Yorker spotlighted Ross Douthat, a popular Times columnist. The title of the article is noteworthy: "The Believer: Ross Douthat's Theories of Persuasion." Douthat is a conservative leaning Catholic who is a pro-lifer and an advocate for traditional marriage.

How does he negotiate working with colleagues whose views are radically different from his own? The article offers one example that might be instructive.

In 2015, Douthat wrote a piece critical of the Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage, expressing concern that it reflected a "more relaxed view of marriage's importance." Before releasing it, he thought of Michael Barbaro. Barbaro has been a close friend of Douthat's since childhood. He refers to himself as Douthat's "sidekick." And Barbaro was married to a man. Barbaro recalls:

We hadn't been in touch that much, but Ross reached out to me to say, “I'm about to publish a column in which I come out against same-sex marriage. I want you to know that it didn't come to me easily. It's something I know may be sensitive to you. And, as somebody I care about, I want you to understand it. I don't want you to read about it in my column without us talking about it.”

When Barbaro shared how much he appreciated the note, Chotiner, the New Yorker reporter conducting the interview, was surprised, Barbaro should have been furious! Why wasn't he? Barbaro explained:

I was wounded by the position he took on a personal level. How could I not be? But it was meaningfully tempered by the reality that I knew where he was coming from, and that he had gone to the trouble to reach out to me.

Barbaro and his husband later divorced. When Chotiner interviewed him, Ross was on vacation with his wife and two children. He shared, "I've been on a long journey that I know Ross generally approves of. But, although I didn't do it for him, it's very funny, as I have had children, I can just sense his glee. It's no secret that he wants people to have children and to enter into monogamous heterosexual relationships." Barbaro let out a laugh. "And that wasn't my plan, but I have sensed his joy at that outcome."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Part of the pressure of sharing our Christian worldview comes from our mistaken belief that we must convince others of our views. But our job is much simpler than all that. We are called only to speak the truth in love. And you'd be surprised at how persuasive that simple act can be.

Three members of a local family set off on a long-term camping adventure, intent on living off the grid. Their endeavor took a fatal turn when their three decomposed bodies were discovered recently at a remote campsite.

Gunnison County Coroner Michael Barnes identified the deceased as Rebecca Vance, 42; her 14-year-old son whose name is undisclosed for privacy reasons, and Christine Vance, 41, all from Colorado Springs. Trevala Jara, a Vance stepsister, revealed they didn't disclose their destination before embarking on the journey. The family likely began camping in July 2022, and eventually succumbed to the elements during the harsh winter months.

Friends and family say that Rebecca Vance was motivated by an intense dissatisfaction with the direction of ongoing world and local events—including fallout from the pandemic—and sought an isolated life to shield her family from external influences. The Vances remained committed to their off-grid choice, despite attempts to dissuade them. “We tried to stop them,” said Jara. “But they wouldn’t listen.”

The Vances attempted to subsist on canned food and prepackaged items. After the bodies were discovered, exact causes of death were uncertain, but malnutrition and exposure in the high-altitude winter remain undeniable factors. Gunnison County Sheriff Adam Murdie highlighted the unusual nature of the incident. “This is not a typical occurrence anywhere, by any means,” said Murdie.

Living off the grid, a pursuit of self-sufficiency without public utilities, has gained attention, though experts suggest that for people it's not economically practical. This tragedy underscores the challenges of disconnecting from society, emphasizing the need for balance between safety, security, and self-sufficiency.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As followers of Christ, we are called to be a united family, supporting, and uplifting one another. Let us not retreat into isolation, but rather open our hearts to the blessings of fellowship and community.

New York Times tech writer Shira Ovide tried to describe the size, power, and wealth of the Big Tech companies. She writes, “Every few months, I concoct new ways to say that tech giants make a lot of money. Today, I give up. I’ll just say that Big Tech companies are really, really, really, really big and really, really, really, really, REALLY rich.”

America’s five technology superpowers—Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook—are titanic, and still growing. They have nearly infinite resources to help them stay on top. She showed the following numbers:

Apple’s profit for the past year ($101 billion) was more than the combined yearly profits of—take a deep breath—Walmart, General Motors, Exxon, Pfizer, Verizon, Disney, Coke, and McDonald’s.

People watch 15 billion YouTube Shorts (bite-sized videos like TikTok’s) each day.

Facebook generates, on average, $214 for each user in the U.S. and Canada last year. Facebook is one of the best money-making machines in internet history.

Microsoft owns the (not popular) Bing search engine. And yet the company’s annual advertising sales of more than $10 billion are about 20 times the 2021 ad sales of The New York Times.

Amazon is so mammoth that just the current decreased value ($267 billion) is about the total value of Disney. Jeff Bezos’ new yacht is so big that a bridge in the Netherlands will be dismantled to accommodate the boat’s height. THAT is rich.

Possible Preaching Angles:

With this level of successful money-making, we need to ask how these companies are influencing and shaping our minds, hearts, and lives.

The pandemic has done a lot of strange things to the global economy over the last 14 months, from creating a massive shortage of semiconductor chips to a ballooning supply of hand sanitizer.

The US housing market has gone haywire too, as urbanites took advantage of remote work to leave expensive cities and resettle in smaller towns across the US. But it's not all that simple. Glenn Kelman, the chief executive of Redfin, broke down some of his observations of just how unusual the current US housing market is in a Tuesday Twitter thread:

Inventory is down 37% year over year to a record low. The typical home sells in 17 days, a record low. Home prices are up a record amount, 24% year over year, to a record high. And still homes sell on average for 1.7% higher than the asking price, another record.

It has been hard to convey how bizarre the US housing market has become. For example, a Bethesda, Maryland homebuyer included in her written offer a pledge to name her first-born child after the seller. She lost.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God’s people have no such worry. We have a guaranteed home in heaven, personally prepared by Christ, reserved in heaven for us. And, we should mention, it is fully paid for.

In an article for Leadership journal, Gordon MacDonald shares the story of a friend who was caught in the middle of a nasty church conflict that had spun out of control. When MacDonald asked his friend how the situation had been resolved, his friend told him that he had been confronted with a piercing piece of advice: "Someone has to show a little dignity in this thing. It really should start with you." MacDonald's friend took the wisdom to heart, and it worked wonders in the situation. MacDonald took the wisdom to heart himself and had the opportunity to apply it when caught in the middle of an airport fiasco.

MacDonald was scheduled to fly from Boston's Logan Airport to Chicago, but the boarding-pass attendant realized that he was scheduled to fly not out of Boston, but Manchester, New Hampshire. MacDonald asked whether she could solve the problem for him. She could—but for an extra $360.

MacDonald was shocked. "I'm a 100k customer on your airline. I give you guys a lot of my business. Can't you just get me on the flight for free as a courtesy?" But the boarding-pass attendant said her hands were tied. MacDonald would have to pay the $360.

The testy situation had reached its decisive moment. Though the problem was a result of MacDonald's incorrect booking, he felt "depreciated, blown off, victimized by a big company that seemed to put a monetary value on every transaction." As he points out in his article, "the ungodly part of me wanted to say something sarcastic (about friendly skies, for example) that would hurt the other person as I felt hurt. Hurting her would help me to feel that I'd hurt the rest of the company—all the way up to the CEO. Perhaps she'd call and tell him how I felt so that his day would be ruined like mine was about to be ruined."

But then he remembered the advice his friend had been given: "Someone has to show a little dignity in this thing. It really should start with you."

MacDonald swallowed his pride and applied the advice to the situation at hand. He writes about what happened next:

I said to the boarding-pass lady, "Before I pay you the $360, let me say one more thing. Six weeks ago I came here to take a flight to the West Coast and discovered that the airline had cancelled the flight and hadn't told me. They said they were sorry, and I forgave them.

"Then two weeks later, on a flight to Europe, the airline lost my luggage (for two days). They said they were really, really sorry. And, again, I forgave them.

"Last week, on a third flight, they got me to my destination two hours late. Your people fell all over themselves saying how sorry they were about the delays. And you know what? I forgave them again. Now here I am—fourth time in six weeks—wanting to fly with you again. See how forgiving I am?

"But this morning the problem's mine. I forgot that I scheduled myself out of the other airport. And I am really, really sorry that I made this terrible mistake.

"You guys have said 'sorry' to me three times in the last six weeks, and, each time I have forgiven you. Now I would like to say 'sorry' to you and ask you to forgive me and put me on that flight without charging me the $360. You have three 'sorries,' and now I'm asking for one. Does that make any sense to you?"

The boarding-pass lady took her own time-out and considered my idea and then said, "It really does make sense to me. Let me see what I can do."

She typed and typed and typed into her computer—as if she was writing a novella—and then looked up with a smile. "We can do this," she said. Two minutes later I was off to the gate with my boarding pass.

That morning dignity won. The airline forgave me. The skies were indeed friendly. I didn't have to pay an extra $360.

MacDonald offers these closing thoughts: "This increasingly crowded, noisy world is generating more and more of these kinds of moments where no one is really doing something bad … just stupid (me, in this case). But because our human dignity is eroded by these constant clashes, even our innocent mistakes point to the possibility for hateful exchanges and vengeful acts. You have to keep alert lest you get sucked into saying and doing things that you'll regret an hour later."