Civil Discourse

We’ve forgotten how to talk to each other. We can text, tweet, even post on Facebook, but face-to-face conversation on essential issues is sick and does not get around anymore.

Married couples quit talking, and divorce.

Newspapers deliver one-sided diatribes.

The various races shout at and accuse one another.

Campus free speech is shut down by warped, hatred-filled notions of intolerance.

Politics is a snarling fur fight of junkyard dogs.

The internet social media is overflowing with anger, slander, and fake news.

Friends cannot disagree and still be agreeable.

And even churches are quarreling themselves into division.

Yet civil discourse is a real possibility again. The Bible explains how. And we can learn

For answers look no further than Scripture’s opening pages in Genesis, chapters 1 through 4. God created Adam and Eve. He placed them in a perfect garden, limited their behavior with clear, healthy boundaries. And He continued his relationship with them in face-to-face encounters.

When Adam and Eve sinned, God walked in the garden looking for them. He was not in a hurry, spoiling for a fight. He valued both truth and his relationship with people. Notice there is no name-calling. Stupid! Loser! Idiot! No, God is respectful. He calls them by name. Nothing cuts off a conversation like insults. Dumb! Brainless! Folks quit listening. The doors slam shut.

The Bible tells us God came to them in “the cool of the evening.” God came at a good time—after the heat of the day, after they had eaten. He didn’t come jumping to conclusions with judgment. Rather He came asking questions: “Where are you?” “What have you done?”  He listened. To their side of the argument. He gathered facts.

In all this, God earned his right to be heard.

And all this He did face-to-face. Not over the phone. Not in a Facebook posting rant.

So, you see here the essentials of civil discourse laid out in God’s relationship with man, and it is incumbent that God’s people lay them out in our own relations today. As God led the way with Adam, His people must show the way in our own culture today.

The Reverend Stephen Crotts is the director of the Carolina Study Center, Inc., a campus ministry, located in Chapel Hill, NC. Pastor Crotts may be reached at carolinastudycenter@msn.com.