Stupid or evil

I’ve been getting discouraged about how easy it is to jump to the conclusion that anyone who disagrees with us must be either stupid or evil. Perhaps this is an artifact of believing something passionately. If you are whole-heartedly on one side of the debate (any debate), it just seems downright impossible that anyone in his or her right mind could see things in a contrary way.

This habit of seeing opponents as either stupid or evil is being pretty well demonstrated at present in the debates on health care reform. Passionate people on both sides are declaring that folks on the other side must be invincibly ignorant – or else downright evil. They either don’t realize how bad the health care system is now, or don’t realize how terrible it will be if we make these changes – or they do realize, and are just plain evil. They actually want to deprive people of health care, under one system or the other, out of sheer evilness. Bastards.

Theological debates, which you might think would be governed by more civility, all too often fall into the same “stupid or evil” trap. Folks who have strong convictions on a topic such as women’s ordination, or predestination, or baptism, or various social issues simply can’t believe that anyone who looks at the scriptures with a modicum of logic and common sense could disagree. They think, “You seem like a nice, sincere person, so I have to believe that you will eventually come to see things my way, since it’s really the only way that makes any sense. Either that, or . . . . you’re evil.”

It generally seems nicer to believe in the stupidity of others. That is, people who disagree with you just haven’t read the right books, or looked at the scriptures hard enough, or aren’t quite up to snuff in the brains department. If they were just a little bit smarter, or examined the issue a little bit longer, they would surely agree with you and your church. Well, unless they’re evil.

It’s hard to talk to people who think you are either stupid or evil. Conversation is not so much “Let me hear what you have to say on this, and maybe I can understand it better,” but “Let’s talk about this until you see that I am right.”