c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Stirred by the sight of a large truck pulling alongside, my 14-year-old son and I accelerate our dreaming about a Grand Crossing-America Drive.

Next summer perhaps. Drive north to Minnesota, west across South Dakota and Montana, on to Seattle, down the coast to California, and back across Colorado and Kansas. Visit family along the way. Explore America beyond lookalike interstate highways and political red vs. blue maps.

Take our time, both of us write journals, see America through teenage and middle-age eyes, and listen to America, too, through our different musical tastes and discovering what people out there talk about.

Break free, in other words, from limited perspectives. See reality through another’s eyes, discover wheat fields and mountains through another’s awe, catch the beat of another’s rhythm, learn to honor more deeply another’s viewpoints.

In these polarized, hyper-righteous times, we need such freedom. More and more people have decided their perspective is absolute, beyond question, truly patriotic, truly scriptural, and all other viewpoints are wrong and sinful.

They might allow room for that smug pseudo-tolerance that allows the other to be wrong and get away with it, but they resist that deeper tolerance that understands other perspectives as valid and necessary for grasping the whole truth.

Some “prove” their perspective with reference to Scripture or patriotic assumptions. Some “prove” by dismissing the other’s sources of authority. Rather than listen to each other and respect the other’s way of reasoning, many defend their world-view with escalating shrillness, until community becomes impossible.

I see this constantly in Bible-related disagreements, where two people read the same Scripture, come to different conclusions and then insist that their reading is absolutely correct. A third person, meanwhile, disputes the whole notion of consulting Scripture. I see it in political discussions, where two people develop opinions that allow no room for other perspectives, and a third says, “Who cares?” as if caring itself were wrong.

Everything becomes a showdown, not an opportunity to discover. People rally behind certain champions and take the slightest question or criticism as an assault on the whole house of cards. The normal process of accountability is dismissed as a “blame game,” because absolutes allow no room for gray. Instead of solving problems, we demonize those who name problems. Instead of zesty disagreement, in which competing viewpoints grapple respectfully, some whine about being persecuted and others bemoan the ignorance that doesn’t accept their superiority.

Yes, it sounds immature, like the absolutes of an adolescent who hasn’t yet been tempered by experience. But more and more people seem to be trapped in adolescence, safe within self-affirming fellowships, preferring teachers who tell them what they want to hear, shunning the company of people who see, hear and respond differently.

It seems fearful, as if a divergent perspective were inherently hazardous and allowing equal time offended God and endangered one’s virtue.

It seems fragile and mean. If reality doesn’t cooperate with one’s inherently flawed perspective, then escape reality _ a form of insanity much in vogue today _ or demonize reality and all who foment it. Cling to the leader who declares them right, and follow that leader anywhere.

One answer, I think, is to get out of the hothouse worlds we have created to reinforce our limited perspectives. Visit other churches, for example. Don’t just read what partisans say about the other side; read the other side. Venture into problems, like the flawed disaster response after Katrina, and not just to attack or to defend the usual suspects. Get into more arguments. Let politics into your church.

Another answer is humility. Perhaps the most frightening arrogance in these arrogant times is the hubris that denies the validity of any other perspective. That is the pathway to demagoguery.

Disagreement isn’t the work of the devil; it is the soul yearning to breathe free.

KRE/JL END EHRICH

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)

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