If you want to be comfortable, don’t expect to grow. It all depends on what your goal is. If you want well reasoned positions and beliefs then be prepared to be made uncomfortable. Those are only formed through severe testing and severe testing by its very nature is uncomfortable. The people who have the best positions are those who have allowed themselves to suffer through extreme discomfort in order to work through what it is they believe.
This means that we cannot shy away from uncomfortable conversations. It seems to me that today these sorts of conversations are discouraged. It is as if people have been trained to avoid all discomfort and use all manner of tactics to shut down the conversation if things don’t seem to be going there way. Why not change the goal of the conversation in order to stay in the conversation? Change it from winning to developing well reasoned thinking and positions. Once you do that you will be able to weather the storm of potential uncomfortability because the end goal is worth it, just as Navy Seals endure “Hell week” because the end goal is worth it. It all depends on what your goal is and many people have never taken the time to define their goals. So they keep jumping out of situations and conversations that are good for them.
Hang in there! The secret to the next leg of personal and spiritual growth for you might just be the next ten or twenty conversations you feel like running away from as fast as humanly possible. Stick it out and see what happens.
One Response
The cofC positions on most topics were determined long ago by one side beating the other side and then forcing their position on the losers. After that, the idea of any discussion went out the window. I remember being taught that the goal of a discussion was to win by merely telling someone how wrong they were, that they were going to hell, and how to proof text your being right. (Fortunately, I did not buy into this, but it was pretty standard.) It took a number of decades for that method to be shown quite faulty which resulted in a lot of shrinking churches. I agree with Matt that the hard conversation is necessary. If you don’t have the conversation someone else will, and you probably won’t agree with any of their reasoning, e.g. agnostic, atheist. However, they will be heard simply because they will be the only person willing to talk.