When I started graduate school two years ago, I was shocked by how low my tolerance was for disagreement. When peers debated about the doctrine of original sin or women in leadership or Biblical innerancy, I disengaged, fearful of adding my opinion to the messy mix.
As I described how uncomfortable I felt during a heated argument about Noah’s ark (LOL), one of my best friends asked this: “Why do you think disagreement makes you feel unsafe?”
“I wouldn’t have used that language but I guess you’re right,” I said, “Disagreement feels like a threat.”
An experience from high school came to mind. I was in a fight with two of my best friends about who-knows-what, and after a heated confrontation they got in their car and drove away, leaving me alone at Starbucks on Maryland Way. I felt chillingly alone, terrified of going back to school and facing them the next day.
Traumatic experiences, both small and large, act like liquid nitrogen and flash-freeze us in time. If we don’t intentionally thaw out, our beliefs will remain crystallized and resistant to growth. This is why some adults suck their thumbs when they feel triggered— part of them is frozen in a child-like state and have not thawed out whatever traumatic experience it was that caused them to self-soothe in the first place. Or, in less extreme examples, this might be why you cringe every time you drive past the intersection where you got in a wreck a few years ago. This might be why you fast-forward through the tense parts in television shows, because discomfort— even fictional discomfort— taps into some moment in your life that is frozen in time.
And yeah, this is why I felt unsafe when my classmates disagreed about the flood in Genesis.
I associated disagreement with that Starbucks experience, when disagreement led to feelings of abandonment, rejection and loneliness.
If there is no room for disagreement, someone is going to end up voiceless. We are not a monolith, are we? Part of the beauty of the Body of Christ is there are ears and hands and toes and kneecaps and heart tissue and livers and brain cells, and each of us will share a unique perspective. Some of us, like the liver, will focus on ridding the body of toxins. Others, like the brain, will be consumed by thought. Others, like the hands, will be practical in nature, focused on building, writing, and serving.
Without each other, we’d be one giant liver without a body to cleanse. We’d be one brain without the compassion of a heart. We’d be a big ‘ole eye without mouths to speak.
We need each other because of our differences, not in spite of our differences.
And that will come with heated debates about creative things like music and serious things like Hell, but that’s okay. Our goal is not to agree about everything, but to love in everything.
Maybe your tolerance for disagreement is low, too? Maybe you feel afraid, unsafe, voiceless, or small when people argue. I wonder if there’s a correlating experience that got doused in liquid nitrogen, freezing you in time? What would the process of thawing out look like?