In the Bible’s Book of Luke, there’s a parable about a religious person, who has all the right opinions, and a tax collector, who is culturally despised. To paraphrase the religious person, he prays, “Thank you, God, that I’m not like those others, the immoral people.” But the tax collector beats his chest in sorrow and prays for God’s mercy. The parable is about the need for humility. The “sinner,” the tax collector, not the religious person, turns out to be the righteous one. Luke tells us that Jesus told this parable “to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else.” That appears to be a lot of us in 21st-century America.
A Scientific American report on political polarization noted that Americans increasingly hold “a basic abhorrence for their opponents — an ‘othering’ in which a group conceives of its rivals as wholly alien in every way.” It continues, “This toxic form of polarization has fundamentally altered political discourse, public civility and even the way politicians govern.” A 2019 study by Pew said, “55 percent of Republicans say Democrats are ‘more immoral’ when compared with other Americans; 47 percent of Democrats say the same about Republicans.”
We find one another repugnant — not just wrong, but bad. Our rhetoric casts the arguments of others as profound moral failings.
Those who are sympathetic to the Florida legislation dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill don’t just want to leave lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity — with all the inevitable values-laden presuppositions they entail — to parents until kids are around 9 years old; they are “homophobic” and “transphobic.” Those who oppose the bill don’t simply think it wise to acknowledge the reality of multiple sexual orientations and gender identities in a pluralistic society or worry the bill may force gay teachers into the closet; they are “groomers.”
Those who want to roll back Covid restrictions are not people who, given the effectiveness of vaccines, are concerned about other social problems caused by Covid precautions; they are “ableists.” Those who take a more cautious approach are “alarmists.”
Those who think that balancing the rights of a pregnant woman with the rights of a fetus is difficult enough that decisions about whether to abort are best left to individuals, not the state, are smeared as “baby killers.” Those who believe biology makes it clear that a fetus is a human being who deserves protection from lethal violence are deemed “misogynists” or even, as one representative email I received after last week’s newsletter on abortion said, “full of hate, racism and white supremacy.”
Our tendency to adopt polarizing and moralistic patterns of speech is turbo-boosted by a social media architecture that encourages animosity toward outgroups.
But this hatred toward our opponents and the accompanying habit of moralism is destroying us as people. To be clear, I am not saying that I find all the brief arguments I’ve listed above equally valid or true. And I’m certainly not saying that they don’t really matter or have enormous cultural ramifications. I’m saying that we cannot flourish as individuals or as a society if we cast all those who differ from us as moral monsters.
To do so is a self-defensive move, and one that is ultimately self-defeating. If others’ views are simply morally indefensible, we don’t have to defend our own. We don’t have to consider complex arguments or where we might be shortsighted or biased. We certainly don’t have to be open to persuasion, since to change one’s mind is to join “the dark side.”
Furthermore, seeing those with whom we differ as morally contemptible makes us bitter and less joyful. We become sneering, intolerant and bombastic. Like the obnoxious guy in Luke’s parable, we scorn everyone else. We delight in the callout and the pile-on. Assuming the worst about everyone else ultimately makes us become the worst versions of ourselves.
So before we disagree with others, we have to make a decision about who our ideological opponents are. Are they like us or wholly other? How should we think of people, especially people with whom we have deep differences?
For me, the answer to this question is rooted in two ideas. One is that every single one of us is, as described in the book of Genesis, made in the image of God. With this core identity comes indelible dignity and worth. In practice, this means that I must assume that people I interact with, even those with whom I disagree, often have things they love that are worth defending and perspectives that I can learn from.
The other idea that informs how I see people is that they are fallen. The idea of human depravity or sinfulness means that every person — including me — is myopic and limited, their thinking faulty and subject to deception and confusion. This should humble us all.
One way to repair our social discourse is to begin with the assumption that we are not wildly better or worse than anyone else. Each person who disagrees with me (and each who doesn’t) is, like me, a complex blend of insight, neurosis and sin, pure and impure motives, right on some things, wrong on others.
There are, of course, limits to this. Essays like this inevitably meet with a response of, “What about Hitler?” or “What about George Wallace?” Charity doesn’t consign us to relativism. There are clearly times when one side is entirely right and one side is entirely wrong.
But these kinds of clear moral lines are the exception in history. If we endow every issue with the moral clarity and urgency of the Holocaust or Jim Crow, we will not be able to adjudicate those many issues that are far more complex, where people of good faith can strongly disagree yet remain good neighbors. If we refuse this kind of good-faith argument, we cannot practice democracy. If our opponents are simply moral monsters, we will assume that they cannot be persuaded — only shamed, silenced or dominated.
Beyond that, if we refuse this kind of good-faith argument, humility becomes impossible. If our ideological opponents are equivalent to the vilest villains of history, then we, of course, are squarely on the side of the right and true. The Yale theologian Miroslav Volf said, “Humility is a signature virtue of the Christian faith. Joy is its signature emotion.” Humility, he says, births joy because it rescues us from endless recriminations and allows us to see goodness — in ourselves and in the world — as a gift to be received and celebrated. I’d add that it teaches us to find common humanity with one another. It’s what makes the religious person and the tax collector able to live as neighbors.
Thinking the best of the other will inevitably mean we sometimes think more highly of others than we should. We will assume their motives are purer than they actually are. But if we must err, this is the right way to err. It’s easy to think that when we consider the strongest argument and most charitable motivations of others we are doing them a favor. But we are actually doing ourselves a favor as well. Not only does dealing with steel men, as opposed to straw men, help our own arguments grow sharper, it also helps us continue to have a posture of learning, of growth, of curiosity, of compassion and of joy.
Tish Harrison Warren (@Tish_H_Warren) is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America and author of “Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep.”
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