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Quotations I love: Rick Warren on love and disagreement

Lynne Baab • Wednesday September 7 2016

Quotations I love: Rick Warren on love and disagreement

“Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone is to agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.” Rick Warren

This quotation echoes one of the major findings of my research on listening, which I’ll explain in this post. I looked around online to try to find the source for this quotation, and instead I found a great deal of anger about the quotation from Christians on both sides of the GLBT debate. So, as I discuss the quotation, I’m going to ask you, my lovely readers, to set aside your thoughts about sexuality issues and think about human disagreements in other areas.

Let’s use an example from my life to consider Rick Warren’s words. A few years ago I reconnected with a woman I had known in a Christian fellowship group when she and I were in our twenties. In our conversation, I found out that in her thirties she became disillusioned with the church. She embraced a Buddhist meditation practice that she has continued for more than two decades.

When I learned about this, several different emotions flooded my body. I felt sad that I wouldn’t get to hear the story of what it looked like for someone to follow Jesus over the many years since we’d last seen each other. I felt anxious that I wouldn’t know what to say to her. And I also worried that if I drew her out about her Buddhist practice, which I wanted to do, that I would be communicating tactic agreement with her practice.

In my listening research, I learned that most people feel a fair amount of anxiety when they listen, especially when the person they’re listening to is expressing an opinion that differs with theirs. Rick Warren writes that we have accepted two lies, and the first one is this: “if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them.” My listening research indicates that it is a natural human response to feel some level of fear when we interact with someone who has a major life value that is different than ours. Will I know what to say? Will I defend my own opinion appropriately, gently and firmly? If I ask some questions about the underlying motivations and passions that lie behind this value, will it sound like I agree?

These questions reflect the normal fear or anxiety that we experience when we listen to someone who is different than we are. But we have to remember that in fact, every human being on the face of the earth is different than we are, even our closest friends who share most of our deepest values. This truth relates to Warren’s second lie, that “to love someone is to agree with everything they believe or do.”

One of the most significant listening skills is learning to set aside the fears – big and small – that sweep through our minds and bodies when a conversation partner disagrees with something we hold dear. We will be able to listen and converse with compassion only if we can set aside that inner turmoil or inner noise. “You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate” says Rick Warren, but we do need to identify our fears so we can respond appropriately.

“I’m still a committed Christian,” I said to my friend. “But I am very interested in hearing in what you value about your Buddhist practice.”

 

Here are two articles I wrote about setting aside various forms of inner noise as we listen:
     Listening past the noise
     Letting go of agendas so we can listen to God and others

I’ve also written many blog posts about listening, as well as a book, The Power of Listening.

(Next week, spiritual practices that help address a vivid quotation by Fulton Oursler: “Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future.” If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column.)



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