Years ago, a young woman applied to work with MCC. I read her application. It was fine. Except, apparently, for one thing: her position about war and a 'biblical peace position' wasn't very strong. She admitted that she struggled with that question. She was not accepted, and I suspect she never did work with MCC.
The editor of the Canadian Mennonite, Will Braun, in the March 13 issue, asks if in our efforts to 'make everything good' (my words) we have managed to cancel out open discussion and conversation. He worries that, particularly, we progressives are doing this to those around us. 'Is the ban back?', he asks. It's a cancel culture, 'a present-day practise akin to shunning … a creeping tendency to dismiss people rather than to engage, and it's associated with progressives, and it is in the church', he writes.
Way back, when I was in grade 10, there was a spat in our high school, about dancing. We who thought ourselves Christian, for some reason or other felt it our duty to take a stand against our school having a dance. To this day, I'm a little embarrassed by all the fuss we made over it. I don't even remember if, in the end, there was a dance or not. I do remember wondering what my 'position' should be, and thinking that, of course, I needed to side with the 'against' group because, well, dancing must be against Christian rules. It isn't, and it wasn't, but for about a week or so, we split the high school, and I'm quite sure we did nothing good for what we thought was a 'Christian witness'. My dad, when I told him about the spat going on, asked if I had said or done anything. No, I said, thinking he would be disappointed in me. But no. That's good, he said.
These days, and maybe we were always like this (were we?) we seem to have a need for firm opinions. Positions. With flags. Covid masks and vaccines fiercely brought that out among us. We came out of our corners to conquer and win and our strong feelings about all this attached themselves to other sentiments that might have been there all along, and we brought those with us into the ring as well. Today, if we're progressives, we can't entertain a comment about climate change, for example, that isn't convinced. An inconclusive conversation about it just won't do anymore. Some of us, if we're more conservative, have a hard time acknowledging anyone who supports LGBTQ people, or in Canadian politics, someone who might vote NDP, or, in the Evangelical Christian world, a person unsure about biblical interpretations. Our refuge is in the strength of our convictions.
Maybe we are settling down a bit, but conversation is one of the casualties of all this 'certainty' in the Western world. And maybe it's not unique to us westerners; positions anywhere don't usually lead to pleasant or even any kind of conversation. They are conversation stoppers. Ordinary conversation becomes guarded when people are worried about positions they feel they need to take, or think whoever else in the ring has taken. The Prime Minister accuses the opposition, whose job it is to hold the government to account, of reducing an important issue to partisan politics, but in so saying, he does the same, so that in the end, is there ever a bill, or any subject of debate that isn't immediately reduced to slogans and positions accompanied by loud movements to either side? Could any one of our federal or provincial party leaders, instead of running to defend their positions, have the courage to stay in the middle of the court, just once, and, say, put out a table with chairs … and then 'let's have some faspa' while we talk about this? Trudeau and Poilievre? Not likely. Their masses would be confused and we can't have that! Our entire country would be upended … and the media would not know what to do because well, they also thrive on the positions we all keep taking. Still … I'm quite sure we would have a massive response, mostly positive if anyone in any public sphere would, just once, boldly say, I'm not sure. Let's talk and think together about this. I don't know how churches hire pastors, but if I were on a committee, I would look for the candidate who, in the interview would at least once or twice say, 'I'm not sure'.
Alexander McCall Smith's books about the No.1 Ladies Detective of Botswana are about common people-sense. She is a self-schooled detective who helps people sort out their problems. All kinds of problems. She remains throughout, a consistently humble woman who works hard toward solutions that are sensible and that, so much as is possible, don't alienate either side of the issue too much. And it often happens over a large cup of bush tea. In book 19, Mma Ramotswe is pushed into running for city council. She doesn't want to, but her friends convince her that for the good of Botswana, she must. Even for a short while. In the course of all the conversation and debate about what kinds of slogans to put on her posters (after all, she must stand for something) she finally insists on this: I'm not much. I don't know what I can do for you. But I will try my best. It's fiction, but in that story, she wins.
Who, possibly, in leadership today would promote themselves without a slogan, and without stating strong positions. That is how it's done. We insist on positions when we hire people, when we elect them, when we anoint them for faith leadership roles and when we talk about vaccines and masks and many other important things? Well, what if the candidate isn't sure? Without a clear, convincing statement, they don't get the job, neither with the progressives nor with the conservatives because, well, no position???!!! That can't be good!! We need certainty, and wandering around in the desert, learning with each other isn't for us.
Travis Toews, Minister of Finance in our Alberta government, announced yesterday that he will not run in the next election, which is coming up quickly. This morning, in the Calgary Herald, the finance critic in the NDP (opposition) commented: 'I don't like his record', she said, 'but he conducted himself with decency'. Could we say that more often to each other? Could our Prime Minister even once thank the opposition for doing their job? And maybe the other way around also? Surprise us, gentlemen!! It might encourage others of us to do the same.
In the Canadian Mennonite, also March 13, Emma Siemens writes about cancelling cancel culture. 'Our common humanity is our God-given capacity for doing wrong and right, for bad and good', she writes. A reminder that, with a bit of thoughtfulness … now and then, we might surprise ourselves into a more decency-oriented world of conversations where we might also become better at sensibly solving things rather running to our corners and throwing up the barriers.
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