A Thanksgiving Exhortation: Give People Space to Think
by Lanie Anderson
In November 2015, Saturday Night Live aired a skit called “A Thanksgiving Miracle.” In the skit, a family begins to air their political grievances—comically, of course, in SNL fashion—around the Thanksgiving table.
Tired of the bickering, a child gets up from the table and starts playing “Hello” by Adele from the CD player. The bickering suddenly stops as each family member starts to sing.
The “miracle?” Adele’s familiar song, “Hello,” is the only thing that brings the family together.
Many Americans could relate to the family’s heated conversations. They found them hilarious and shared the skit across social media when it released.
Nine years later, we aren’t laughing anymore.
Instead, many of us are weary of the political polarization, and we are already anticipating that a family member will voice a strong, contentious opinion while passing the mashed potatoes.
At Thanksgiving and in the months that will follow, how should we navigate conversations between family, friends, coworkers, and others with whom we won’t always agree?
Before we sit down to feast tomorrow, I want to share some wisdom with you from Dr. John Lennox, a Christian apologist and Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Oxford University.
In October 2020, Director of the Center for Science and Culture Stephen C. Meyer interviewed Dr. Lennox on the center’s YouTube channel, Discovery Science. In the interview, he shared two important ways his parents modeled Christian love.
The first way is how they loved who they were told to hate. Dr. Lennox grew up in Northern Ireland where he said “sectarian violence” between Catholics and Protestants was common. His father owned a store with about forty employees, and he hired both Protestants and Catholics. His store was bombed, and Dr. Lennox’s brother was almost killed because he refused to discriminate based on religious affiliation. This is what Dr. Lennox said about his father in the interview:
I once asked him, “Dad, why do you take the risk?” He said, “For this reason: that we learn from the Bible this fundamental mandate for civilization that all human beings have the dignity of being made in the image of God,” and he said, “I’m determined to treat them like that, irrespective of what they believe.” And that became an absolutely fundamental principle for me throughout my life—the respect for people even if you violently disagree with them.
Then Dr. Lennox explained the second way his parents set an example of love, which was foundational to his trajectory as a Christian in academia:
The second thing is they loved me enough to give me space to think. Not only that, they encouraged me to think about the Christian worldview but also about other worldviews, and they encouraged me to read very widely so that, when I came up to university, I’d read not only of Christian arguments defending intellectually the veracity of the Christian faith, but I’d read quite a bit of philosophy and quite a lot of the opposition. So coming to Cambridge in 1962 I, in a sense, hit the ground running because I had read a great deal of stuff, and the basic conviction I had was [that] Christianity was true—not simply helpful or emotionally supportive, but actually true.
“They loved me enough to give me space to think.”
What a testament of Christian love and good parenting. I’m not sure we always think of “giving people space to think” as an act of love, but people across the United States and the world—inside and outside the evangelical church—are hungry right now for space to “think.”
What do I mean by “thinking?” I like how Alan Jacobs defines it in his book, How to Think:
[Thinking is] testing your own responses by weighing the available evidence; it’s grasping, as best you can and with all available and relevant senses, what is, and it’s also speculating, as carefully and responsibly as you can, about what might be. And it’s knowing when not to go it alone, and whom you should ask for help.
This kind of thinking is not about simply voicing an opinion. The goal is to discover the truth with a group of people who share that desire, even if it means certain beliefs turn out to be wrong. But many people are finding themselves in places where they are unable to think out loud, ask questions, or simply say, “I don’t know what I think about that.” They fear losing relationships, even if evidence leads them to a different conclusion than their social group.
Groupthink Is Everywhere
In 2014, a former anarchist who was “heavily involved with… radical leftist groups and organizations” wrote an op-ed titled “Everything Is Problematic” for McGill Daily, McGill University’s student newspaper. This student described their inability to think in their former social circles this way:
Every minor heresy inches you further away from the group. People are reluctant to say that anything is too radical for fear of being seen as too un-radical. Conversely, showing your devotion to the cause earns you respect. Groupthink becomes the modus operandi. When I was part of groups like this, everyone was on exactly the same page about a suspiciously large range of issues. Internal disagreement was rare. The insular community served as an incubator of extreme, irrational views.
What happened when the student finally left?
Anti-intellectualism is a pill I swallowed, but it got caught in my throat, and that would eventually save me… Ever since I was a child, the pursuit of knowledge has felt like my calling. It’s part of who I am. I could never turn my back on it. At least not completely. And that was the crack through which the light came in. My love for deep reflection and systematic thinking never ceased… It had been a long while since I had the time and the freedom to just think. At first, I pulled on a few threads, and then with that eventually the whole thing unravelled. Slowly, my political worldview collapsed in on itself.
The aftermath was wonderful. A world that seemed grey and hopeless filled with colour. I can’t convey to you how bleak my worldview was.
In 2018, I discovered this op-ed in the footnotes of another book I was reading. Although this student and I have very different histories and worldviews, I resonated with their love for “deep reflection and systematic thinking” and desire for a community to ask questions about complex issues.
When I read the student’s piece, I was in seminary and also learning and metabolizing a lot of new information. That season challenged a lot of my beliefs. Most of them weren’t Christian doctrines, but my exposure to new people and viewpoints added complexity to the ways I had always perceived and interpreted the world.
I needed people who just “loved me enough to give me space to think,” as Dr. Lennox said about his parents, and I need them now. I believe we all need relationships where we can think out loud without fear of people severing ties with us for asking questions or changing our minds.
But that’s only one side of the equation.
Receptivity and Confrontation
Christian love gives people space to think. But 1 Corinthians 13:6 says Christian love also “rejoices in the truth.” We need people who love us enough to disagree with us and explain why they disagree.
Proverbs 27:6 says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.” When people believe we’re wrong or thinking poorly, truly faithful friends challenge our thoughts or actions while affirming their love for us.
So I hope it’s clear that, by advocating that we “love people enough to give them space to think,” I am not advocating for relativism or quieting your convictions. Not only is relativism not Christian love because love rejoices in the truth, but it is also not a coherent philosophy to live by.
We all have some dogmas or convictions we hold more tightly than others, and those dogmas bond us to communities. That’s not a bad thing, as Jacobs wrote:
To think independently of other human beings is impossible, and if it were possible it would be undesirable. Thinking is necessarily, thoroughly, and wonderfully social. Everything you think is a response to what someone else has thought and said. And when people commend someone for “thinking for herself” they usually mean “ceasing to sound like people I dislike and starting to sound more like people I approve of.”
I haven’t been able to confidently say “I think for myself” since reading Jacobs’ book because I’m persuaded he’s right: “Thinking is necessarily, thoroughly, and wonderfully social.” This is why churches can have statements of faith and love people enough to give them space to think and ask questions.
Churches aren’t the only communities with statements of faith. Around the same time I read the op-ed in McGill Daily, you could find statements of belief on the websites of organizations like Black Lives Matter or The Women’s March about the way the world is and what ought to be done about it.
Humans can’t escape drafting statements of belief, even if they aren’t religious.
I have beliefs I hold tightly, and it would take a lot of evidence to persuade me to change them. I also have beliefs I hold more loosely. But loving people enough to give them space to think about their beliefs does not threaten mine. If I’m committed to truth, loving people in this way will even sharpen or correct my beliefs.
It is possible to do these two things and do them well: give people space to think and maintain your convictions. This is Christian love in practice. In his book Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, Henri Nouwen calls these two sides of Christian love “receptivity” and “confrontation.”
As you prepare for contentious conversations at Thanksgiving and year-round (whether they’re about politics, religion, or something else), I want to leave you with these words from Nouwen’s book:
Reaching out to others without being receptive to them is more harmful than helpful… Really honest receptivity means inviting the stranger into our world on his or her own terms, not ours. When we say, “You can be my guest if you believe what I believe, think what I think, and behave as I do,” we offer love under a condition or for a price. This leads easily to exploitation, making hospitality into a business. In our world in which so many religious convictions, ideologies, and lifestyles come into increasing contact with each other, it is more important than ever to realize that it belongs to the essence of a Christian spirituality to receive our fellow human beings into our world without imposing our religious viewpoint on them as a condition for love, friendship, and care…
But receptivity is only one side of hospitality. The other side, equally important, is confrontation. To be receptive to the stranger in no way implies that we have to become neutral “nobodies.” Real receptivity asks for confrontation because space can only be a welcoming space when there are clear boundaries, and boundaries are limits between which we define our own position. Flexible limits, but limits nonetheless. Confrontation results from the articulate presence, the presence within boundaries, of the host to the guest by which he offers himself as a point of orientation and a frame of reference. We are not hospitable when we leave our house to strangers and let them use it in any way they want. In fact, it quickly becomes a ghost house, making the stranger feel uncomfortable. Instead of losing fears, the guest becomes anxious, suspicious of any noise coming from the attic or the cellar. When we want to be really hospitable, we not only have to receive strangers but also to confront them by an unambiguous presence, not hiding ourselves behind neutrality but showing our ideas, opinions, and life style clearly and distinctly. No real dialogue is possible between somebody and a nobody. We can enter into communication with the other only when our own life choices, attitudes, and viewpoints offer the boundaries that challenge strangers to become aware of their own position and to explore it critically.
Receptivity and confrontation are two sides of Christian witness. They have to remain in careful balance. Receptivity without confrontation leads to a bland neutrality that serves nobody. Confrontation without receptivity leads to an oppressive aggression which hurts everybody. This balance between receptivity and confrontation is found at different points, depending on our individual position in life. But in every life situation we not only have to receive but also to confront.
I hope you have people who love you enough to give you space to think because they are a gift, and I’m so thankful for those people in my life. (I have certainly found women like this in The Society for Women of Letters, too!)
Once you experience this kind of Christian love, you’ll know it, and I hope you extend it to others, too, through the holidays and year round.
We could all use it right now—Happy Thanksgiving!
—Lanie Anderson is Editor-in-Chief of Shadowlands Dispatch and a member of The Society for Women of Letters Leadership Council. She earned her MDiv with a specialization in Christian Apologetics from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and also holds a BA in English from the University of Mississippi. Lanie has written for Christianity Today and The Center for Faith and Culture. She currently stays home with her two children and works remotely, helping nonprofit organizations with their marketing and fundraising efforts.