Disqualified From Speaking

Today, I listened to a podcast making beautifully the case that formal debate teams have set up a structure that excludes people of color, people from lower income brackets, people who lack the advantages the privileged enjoy.

And I can't help equating it with Saturday's gospel and the Pharisees.  The sad thing is that the debate -- however technical and fiddly -- is something I wouldn't mind being explicitly explained.  That's usually the thing about debates that devolve into nonsense.  They had a legitimate point before they started screaming incoherently.

A point easily cleared up by the census data from Bethlehem, but still.

But what the Pharisees do instead is completely discount all of the people who aren't themselves as unworthy of judging matters for themselves.  And then, when one of their number, Nicodemus who spoke with Jesus early in His career and was changed, speaks up (and not even all that forcefully!) in support of Jesus, they sneer that Nicodemus is also from Galilee and so therefore cannot be trusted to judge.

Only they are worthy of judging.  Everyone else is stupid, biased, worthless.  Nothing.

Anyone who disagrees with them must be stupid and/or evil.

That's what we're seeing all over our politics these days.  We say we want everyone to speak, and then the people who disagree with us do, and we must scramble to find some reason that THEY don't get the speak after all.  That their opinions don't count.

And it makes me wonder how much we trust our convictions that we don't try to stand up to them with facts and data and logic.  Just dismiss them from the conversation.  If you don't agree with me, there must be some thing that's making you come to the wrong conclusion.  You can't be an intelligent person who looked at the same facts and came to a more trusting, loving conclusion than I did.

Even two thousand years ago, we were refusing to see the other side of the argument.  To see the other side as equal and human.

No wonder Jesus always argued with the Pharisees and explained to the rest.

And perhaps we all need a moment to think: do people explain their positions to you?  Knowing you'll listen and consider (if not their idea, at least where they're coming from).  Or do they argue with you, because you think it's a matter of winning rather than understanding?