Summary: Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It's such a joy and a privilege to be here with you on Day1 Radio because I'm a big fan of radio broadcasts myself. And one show that has particularly been enriching my life lately is National Public Radio's Indivisible. Indivisible a national call-in show that's trying to take stock of people's hopes and fears for this country in the first hundred days of the new presidential administration. One of the show's goals is to try to find ways for people with different political views to just talk to each other again after an ugly election. The conversations often demonstrate how difficult that goal is. In one episode, the host invited people to call in with a question that they wanted to ask someone on the other side of the aisle -- republicans with a question for democrats, democrats with a question for republicans. But this wasn't supposed to be the kind of accusing question that we normally hurl at each other when we get to talking politics. The host framed this as an opportunity to ask a genuine question, an open-minded question. Something you could ask another person in good faith, and which they could actually answer. A good question was about giving yourself a chance to listen, not about giving yourself a chance to speak. Sounds simple enough, right? But as soon as they opened up the phone lines, it quickly became obvious that this was hard for people. Most of the callers did a pretty bad job of presenting their questions. People across the political spectrum did exactly what the host had asked them not to do. They generalized. They assumed. They accused. They got up on their soapboxes and they started shouting. Everyone wanted their anger to be heard, but few people really wanted to listen to the other side.
