Not From Around Here

There are many things that divide people these days.

Is there hope for any kind of unity? We'll talk about it today on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman. We have this profound opportunity to be the models of learning across regional difference, socioeconomic difference, ethnic difference, saying there's a good chance I'm only seeing part of the truth and not the whole thing.

Could you help me see more than what I'm seeing? Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Today, a man torn between places, raised in the rural south, educated in the suburbs, and now living in New York City. He shares what he's learned about place and its effect on how we live and view others. Brandon O'Brien will join us today and you'll hear about his odyssey from the small town to the larger town to the big city and the people he met along the way.

And Gary, in a lot of ways, I identify with Brandon's experience. I came from a very small town in West Virginia. We didn't even have a stoplight. And the move to a city was a jarring experience to me.

That kind of mirrors your own life, doesn't it? Well, actually, Chris, we had one stoplight in China Grove, North Carolina. And at the age of 17, I left on a Trailways bus and went to Chicago. So you can imagine the shock that I experienced when I moved from small town, North Carolina to Chicago. And I'm excited about our conversation today to talk about, you know, the various aspects of this country. Yeah.

And the division that is there, that just seems to be everywhere you look. And our guest is going to help us. Brandon O'Brien is his name, Director of Content Development and Distribution for Redeemer City to City, where he coordinates, edits and shepherds writing projects with Dr. Timothy Keller and urban church planters around the world. You might remember we had Dr. Keller and his wife Kathy on with us just before Christmas. Dr. Brandon O'Brien has served in pastoral ministry. He's worked in publishing. He's written a few books and taught for state and Christian colleges and universities.

His wife, Amy, and their two children live now in Manhattan, New York. And our featured resource is his latest Not From Around Here, What Unites Us, What Divides Us, and How We Can Move Forward. You'll find out more at FiveLoveLanguages.com. Well, Brandon, welcome to Building Relationships. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.

Well, tell us about the title. I'm intrigued with Not From Around Here. I've heard that before.

Where did it come from in your life? Yeah, I think I've had the feeling now having grown up in Bentonville, Arkansas, moved to the Chicago suburbs and now living in Manhattan. I've had the feeling personally of being not from around here a time or two.

Arkansas is one of those states that people feel free to make fun of. So when we lived in the Chicago suburbs, I got comments about, you know, people surprised that I was wearing shoes and that I could read so well and, you know, those sorts of things. And so you may have experienced that too being from North Carolina.

But it was all good natured. But it did reinforce this sense that, you know, you're not from around here, we do things differently here. And I think as a title of the book, it touches on sort of alienation that people feel when they move or when things change. And, you know, because we're living, I think, in a generation of pretty significant cultural change and division from people that I've talked to who have read the book, that that really strikes something in them that they are beginning at some level even to feel like even if they haven't moved. That the culture has shifted enough that they're kind of beginning to feel like they're not from around here, even if they live in their hometown. Yeah, I think you're right. And you're addressing that whole increasing division that we see in American culture today in the political division in particular, and in the next nine months, I guess we're going to see more and more of that. What's your perspective on that part of the culture? Yeah, I was surprised by, in retrospect, maybe shouldn't have been, but it was really surprised by how divisive so much public discourse became after the last presidential election.

It hasn't cooled off at all. It's gotten worse. And I suspect that this next cycle will be even more confrontational and aggressive. And I think that the, you know, the divisions that people feel some of them are real, but they're certainly going to be exploited, I think, in the next nine months to get voters to promote ad dollars, you know, to get subscribers or whatever to various campaigns. Personally, I think things are going to get ugly in 2020. And that a lot of this discussion may be helpful for folks navigating that. It's almost like we're looking for a fight today. It feels that way.

It really does. Now, in writing your book and sharing your own story, as well as doing research in this whole area, did you learn anything that really surprised you? That's a great question. I think the thing that surprised me the most is how little experience and data most of us actually have about people or groups of people that we have strong opinions about. Which is to say that, you know, statistically speaking, most Americans live pretty close to where they grew up.

We talk a lot about the culture being itinerant and transient, but really the vast majority of people stay put. The vast majority of, for example, white Americans have very few close friendships with people who are not also white. And so we have strong racial division without actually a whole lot of experience across racial lines.

We have a lot of geographical division without a whole lot of experience across geographic lines. And so I think what I found is that we have these deeply held strong opinions about other people, but we don't actually have the data or the experience for those opinions to be based in fact. And so those opinions come to a second hand or third hand through media, through television, through music, through movies, popular culture, you know, and it's amazing that something as divisive as these opinions that we have about people can be based on so little actual experience or actual information.

Well, let's talk about media and its role in explaining ways that America is divided. How much blame do we place on the media? Yeah, well, it's really, it's easy and tempting to blame the media for a lot of things. I think my childhood experience, we blame the media for a lot, corrupting the youth and, you know, doing all kinds of things. But in some ways, it's reflective. It creates certain stories, but also reflects opinions that we already have.

And so I think what happens in the media is that messages get simplified. We look for explanations for things. And then I think of the, you know, after the last election, a lot of especially progressive or, you know, Democratic Americans, Democrat Americans were trying to explain, like, how did candidate Donald Trump become President Donald Trump?

Like, nobody saw that coming, right? And so there were these, this search for explanations. And so people seized on, it's the economy, it's religious liberty, it's nationalism, it's what, and they look for some explanation. And then it may be partially true, but it becomes the explanation. And then it becomes repeated over and over and over in the news and in 24 hour, you know, talk cycles on radio and television and whatever else. And so you get kind of partial explanations of things that become repeated so often that they become, they stand in for the whole explanation.

It fits the narrative. If you have your idea about A, you know, and this is what, and you hear something, it's like, well, there it is. And we get more entrenched in that, right? We're actually looking for commentary and explanation that reinforces what we already think.

Yes. And so the two sides, if you know, it's not quite that simple, but you have liberal and conservative sides, telling very different stories about the same events. And then constituents who are eager to hear their perspective, reinforced, listening to their respective spokespeople, you don't get anywhere that way, except deeper and more entrenched.

And if you happen to flip to another station that's not your station, you don't listen very long until you flip. That's right. Oh, no, I don't like this.

That's right. Well, and you mentioned before that it's like we're looking for a fight and I think you're right. We've, we've become, we've gotten to the point where we, the other side doesn't disagree with us.

The other side is they're either idiotic because they believe something that no reasonable person could believe, or they're sinister and they're out to destroy everything that I value and hold dear. And when that's the sort of starting point for engagement, there really can't be engagement. And I think that the heat will be turned up under that in this next election year, for sure.

One of the other things that I see going on in the culture is it doesn't matter where you, where you fall on the political spectrum. I think a lot of people are pulling back. A lot of people are scared to say anything because they're pounced on if they say, I support or I don't support or how can you that those types of things, they're, they're just scared to even have conversations. And I think that's a dangerous thing in this, in the culture.

I think you're absolutely right. I've noticed this trend in print where people will write a thousand word essay on something and they spend half of it kind of prefacing all the things I'm not saying, you know, so don't, don't misunderstand me. I'm not taking a line on this and I obviously I think that and you know, I think half of print material now is caveats, which is really exhausting to read. But you're right that in whether it's online or in, in person, you know, live actual conversations. I think we're at a place where you, where 100% buy-in is sort of assumed. So if you give a, give an inch and say, you know, that candidate that I disagree with makes a really great point about X. Whoever, everyone listening sort of assumes that you buy everything else that person says, right? There's a sort of like all or nothing mentality that makes it really hard to measure or nuance conversation. And so I have strong opinions in person.

But I'm really hesitant about saying anything on social media, other places because of exactly what you described that if it's hard to say anything without sparking off a firestorm when really your motive may be just engaging in a conversation. Well, Brandon, you mentioned earlier that you grew up in Bentonville, Arkansas, and a lot of us know that there was a stage in that city's like that town's life in which it really the population almost doubled with people coming in from other states and all over. How did that, how did that affect the schools, the churches in that community? Yeah, great question. I read just this week that Bentonville is now on someone's list of the, it's the seventh greatest place to live in America or something.

Okay. I liked it real well when I was there, but I would not have put it on that list in the 90s. It was quiet. It was pretty homogenous.

So ethnically 90 something percent white. It was not entirely Christian. You know, we had our churches all felt a sense of mission to evangelize and things, but I think that we did feel like we had as a community, a shared set of values that you could expect from everyone, whether they were church people or not church people. There was kind of a standard way that we did things.

And when I was in high school, especially it sort of picked up pace pretty, pretty fast. We had a lot of people moving into town because of Walmart and because of other kind of major national employers in the region, but people moving in from the coasts and from the Midwest and from all over. I was familiar with names like Ferguson and those kinds of O'Brien and good sort of Scotch Irish names.

And then we were getting lots of Polish names. And it's funny to me now that that was considered a pretty massive shift, but that's just kind of how homogenous our region was. It's one of those lessons I don't know if anybody taught me explicitly.

When you start reflecting on your own memories, you know, I became hesitant to blame people for things because I don't know what they what they told me versus what I heard. But there was a strong sense that our Christian duty was to resist the sort of secularizing creep that was going to come with all of these new people. Right. And we knew that there would need to be a new mission strategy. I remember our church was in a building campaign and there was talk about designing the building with the sensibilities in mind of these new people who were coming in and had more cosmopolitan views and other things. And so on the one hand, we wanted to kind of accommodate. On the other hand, there was this risk that there's danger outside of our community.

And now that danger is coming in. And, you know, how do we negotiate, navigate changing values when these people are not from around here? And you can tell by their accents and you can tell by their ways of doing things and that they expect restaurants to serve alcohol. And that, you know, those kinds of things that our community had, you know, at least it felt I kind of unanimously agreed on. Now those things are changing. And so the way I think about it is that, you know, I don't remember any overt unkindness towards new people or anything, but I'm sure there was.

But I don't remember it. But the sort of theme of that stage of my life, I think, was resistance, that there's changes coming and our job is to resist it. And that became a kind of model for discipleship. Right.

That the faithful Christian is one who resists secular humanism in school and the kind of loose cultural values that are promoted in television and media. MTV was, you know, the big bad guy at the time. And so resistance was kind of the theme of that part of my life. Yeah. Now you tell a story about the what you call the hell house productions of your youth. Yeah.

Give us some insight into that. Yeah. So we called it the hereafter house and that ended.

I was pretty young still when that ended. But to me, it's a it's kind of an interesting case study because essentially what it is is in place of celebrating Halloween by dressing up, you know, in trick or treating. We would host this event and they still go on, I think, around the country in some places where people come to the church and they get sort of a tour of the afterlife.

Right. And so you've got a section where you go through hell and it's staged. It was in the church basement at our church. We had black lights and we had, you know, packing peanuts that we'd spray painted so that under the black lights they look like coals.

And it was really I thought it was pretty cool, actually. Hell was an exciting place for the kids and teenagers. And so you go through there and you you meet the people who end up in hell. Right. The the partying teenagers and the unfaithful husbands. And there's this sort of types, you know, the characters who are there. And then you go through heaven, you leave there and then you go up through heaven where you meet the cast of characters there. What strikes me is really interesting about it is on the one hand, it kind of shows you some of the politics of the time.

Right. Like these are the big issues for us. So who is in hell? Maybe people who promoted a certain vision of either politics or social change, who is in heaven or people who were maybe victims of those changes. And it wasn't overt, but looking back, you can kind of see the fingerprints of, you know, kind of culture and politics there. I remember really wanting to be like an actor in hell because it was really cool down there and not being allowed to be because I was too young. And that sort of raises the question of like, well, how young is too young to be in hell and what does that mean theologically?

And, you know, so we sort of avoided that by just putting teenagers down there and no one younger than that. Culturally, what I think was interesting about it is that it showed that we knew there were people in our community that needed to be converted. They didn't share our Christian values.

Right. But it also sort of assumed that all it would take for those people to come around is to be reminded of the reality of the afterlife. They didn't really need to be convinced of it. They just needed to see it and kind of snap them out of their current way of life. And so it sort of assumed a Christian worldview, even at the same time that it assumed that there were a lot of people in our community who were not Christians. I think looking back, it was really a fascinating example of our complex relationship to the culture. Right. We knew we needed to convert it. On the same hand, we knew it shared some of our values.

And so where does that leave us as a group that is trying to engage in our culture? And I think there's a really good, I hate to give, there's a spoiler that I don't want to give in the book. I think it's worth reading that section. But I played a very important role in heaven since I was not allowed to play in hell.

And I think readers will enjoy that. All right. I'm glad you got to heaven.

Thank you. I have to say, I don't remember a hereafter house in North Carolina when I grew up, but maybe there were some of the churches had that. But I understand what you're saying. It was a way of trying to get people's attention.

There is an afterlife, you know. Well, let's talk about another concept that you've mentioned in the book, and that is the single story concept. What do you mean by that? And can you give us some examples of what you mean? So this goes back to something that Chris mentioned before, the kind of the narrative that explains our experiences that we reinforce.

And the single story is the idea that there's sort of one narrative that explains or defines an entire group. One example that I mentioned in the book is the idea of people south of the border in Mexico are mainly poor. They're looking for work. They're, you know, fleeing something that they, you know, a way of life that they don't want. So they want to come to, you know, to our country and have a better life. And while that's true of some people, if that becomes the one sort of single story that, you know, the reason, you know, South American immigrants want to come here is because all of South America is terrible and it's just a bunch of gang lords.

And it's there's no great culture and there's no whatever. Then that becomes a sort of single story that defines that group in that chapter where I talk about this. I quote an African novelist who I borrow this term from the single story term from. And she was introduced to the single story when she moved from Africa, where she was a grew up in a middle class family. I think one parent was a professor, a college professor, and the other was a professional of another sort. And so she had a comfortable middle class life, then moved to America for college. And her college roommate was surprised that she knew how to use an oven and that she, you know, that her favorite music was some Western boy band and not like tribal music or something. And she realized that despite her really rich experience in Africa, America, our culture has this one story about Africa, which is that it's poor and war torn and it's, you know, riddled with disease. And it was hard for her to break that single story idea.

I think we see that at play now, right? And we think of the sort of urban rural divide in America. The sort of single story about rural America is that it is full of poor, racist, misogynistic people who are clinging to their, you know, religion and guns as their way of life disappears.

Right. That's kind of the single story in the media. And I think the single story of, you know, where I live now, the East Coast elites, is that they have all this money and they're out of touch with the real life of ordinary people and they're passing laws that affect everyone except for them when they have no business, you know, meddling in everybody else's affairs. And that this becomes the sort of like single story that defines these regions and then is reinforced in the media and even in things like movies and, you know, popular culture, so not even like news media. But those single stories are really powerful and it creates then the starting point of my engagement with someone will be that single story.

So then now it's your job to prove to me that you're not that thing that I assume you are. And it's really hard to dismantle that single story that we have. And there's not just one.

I should say the single story is a little deceptive. There are lots of different kind of narratives about the rural poor or the urban poor or the urban elite. But I think each of us has this sort of dominant narrative about those different people or places. And it shapes how we vote and it shapes, you know, our view on social issues and it shapes our sense of discipleship.

How am I supposed to be a faithful Christian in the world in light of these groups of people that are out there? And so it's a really powerful thing. But again, it's not often based on experience or data or information.

It's based on just stories that get told and retold in different formats around us. Back in November, there was a Berkeley professor who tweeted, I embrace the bashing of rural Americans. They as a group are bad people who have made bad life decisions and we should shame people who aren't pro-city. That's part of whether that's, you know, we don't know the context of all that, but that's part of what you're talking about is that there are these ideas that people have on both sides, right?

That's right. That's that's a great example, right? To lump everyone into this sort of, I mean, we could call it stereotypes, but it's kind of deeper than that because it's it's a whole kind of story about how what people's motives are, what their lifestyle is like, what they want, how they plan to get it, what it's going to cost me. You know, I mean, it's a deep kind of rich, almost mythology that shapes how we engage with people. Yeah, that's a I'm glad you mentioned that's a great example.

I think our listeners can identify with that. I mean, just just call the name of a state, any state, you know, California. So what comes to people's mind? Well, it's different to different people, but they have they have an idea of what it's like in California.

You know, or West Virginia or Arkansas. So it kind of permeates the culture. My question is this. How do we how do we get over that? How do we how do we tend to train ourselves to not to put people in those kind of categories, but to be looking for truth and seeing people as individuals?

Wow. Yeah, that's the question, isn't it? That's the important question.

I think there are a few things that people can do. One is it comes to media. We're all aware of media bias, but we tend to assume that the the other people's media is biased and mine is not. So if you're conservative, you tend to assume that liberal media has a bias. And if you're liberal, you tend to assume that conservative media has a bias, but all media has a bias. And I think it would be helpful for us to recognize that whenever we hear anything through some outlet, that that group has a slant and that they want you to view that news a certain way and that it is at best partially accurate.

Right. So we would do well to try to listen to a range of voices. Or if somebody makes a claim that you think that's outrageous, it may be outrageous, as in you shouldn't believe it.

So let's do a little digging and find out if it's actually true. So that's just in terms of engaging media, which we all do all the time. I think that what I'm most interested in in this book is helping us recognize that we also, each of us as individuals, have certain biases that have been shaped before we even realized it and that they're deeply consequential.

They shape how we understand our Christian faith and how it plays out in the world and what it means to be a faithful Christian and a good disciple. And that one of the things that I'm touching on the book that shapes those things in us is where we're from, where we grow up, the communities that form us. Really, the only way to even see our own blind spots and biases is to interact with people in a meaningful way who are different from us, who grew up in different environments or who are socioeconomically or ethnically different from us. The only way we can kind of see what we don't see is if those things are reflected in us by somebody else.

But that's exactly what we're discouraged from doing in a lot of our media. And in this kind of ideological age, we're discouraged from making friends with the enemy, to put it kind of directly. But our Christian faith, the gospel tells us that, I think of Peter's vision, don't call unclean what God has called clean. So don't call an enemy someone that God has called a friend. And so in the church, we have this profound calling and opportunity to be the models of learning across regional difference, socioeconomic difference, ethnic difference, of kind of humbly coming to one another and saying, there's a good chance I'm only seeing part of reality, part of the truth and not the whole thing.

Could you help me see more than what I'm seeing? That's a profoundly countercultural posture right now. I don't know any other organization or institution that stands to gain from that, really, other than the Church of Christ. And so we're in this unique position to listen to brothers and sisters who differ from us regionally, ethnically, socioeconomically, a number of other ways.

And those differences are real and they're significant, but they're not like terminal, right? They're not going to kill us. But if we can learn from one another, they can actually strengthen us and strengthen the church and give us, I think, a new relevance in the culture to model what it looks like to look for unity in the face of division. You know, Chris mentioned earlier this statement that was very negative about rural America.

Where does this perception originate and how do we get away from that concept? In terms of the church, I mean, I've known pastors who say, well, I don't mind being in a small town or rural town for a few years, but I don't want to stay here forever. It's like this ministry doesn't count very much.

I want to get somewhere, make a greater impact. How do you view that? My goodness.

Yeah. So there are a couple of things there. One is the sort of perception of rural America. And I think it's interesting in my research for this book, I've discovered that it goes way, way back and it goes further than this. But already in the 19th century, sociologists and historians were talking about how, you know, urban populations were more intelligent and more advanced.

And there was a basically when you put people together in a group, everyone's IQ goes up. You know, that's kind of the image you get. And the people who are living in rural America are, you know, like semi-feral. It's like they're living like cave people out in the wilderness. And America would be improved if just everybody moved into the cities. And so that's been around a long time. And I think that, you know, what you're getting at is that the church has internalized that message in significant ways. On the one hand, we kind of view rural America as the holdout for traditional values and simpler way of life and all of that, which is very important for Christians. On the other hand, we feel like it's like small churches and small towns or in the country are a great place to send young pastors to make their mistakes so that they don't make those mistakes in bigger churches that matter more. Right. And nobody puts it exactly that way.

But that's definitely the impression you get. And I was encouraged to do that. I was called to ministry in high school and my church licensed me to gospel ministry when I was 17. And they immediately encouraged me to find pulpit supply opportunities in country churches near us and to find while I was in college to find a small church that I could pastor so I could kind of get my ministry legs under me. And they never said it in a way that explicitly denigrated those little churches. But the implication is that like, well, you don't want to make those mistakes in front of a big crowd. So, you know, go do it in front of a small crowd. It really does devalue the spiritual lives and the spiritual contribution, I think, of those small churches, especially as ministry in a lot of literature.

And, you know, this ministry has sort of been professionalized in the last generation or so in America that makes smaller places the farm leagues for people to get better. We're recording now in holiday season. The Hallmark Channel between Thanksgiving and Christmas markets 24 hour holiday movies, like nonstop for a month.

You can watch all these feel good holiday movies. And what's interesting about them is I would guess that half of them, if not more, involve some urban person going to visit their rural family or a rural friend. On a tree farm. Exactly. Or like the cranberry farm is failing. And so they've got to go back with their business sense and help out with the finances. But then they get there and realize that they're the ones that need help because they've abandoned these, you know, the most important things in life, which is simplicity and relationships.

And they find true love with the farm hand or whatever, you know, and it's like all of the movies are going to do that. And so on the one hand, we speak about rural places as if they're they're backward and they're dangerous to freedom, you know, because they're homophobic and misogynistic and racist and all that. But then on the other hand, we talk about those very same places as if that's where you go to like reconnect with the things that matter the most. And so it's kind of confusing how we view, especially that region, it's a good place to retreat, you know, to go for a break and get away from the real pressures of life. Or it's overrun with, you know, opioid addiction.

Which is it? You know, so we have this kind of conflicted understanding of that region. And I think that trickles into the church to where we we celebrate really kind of suburban ministries, large ministries that are very professional. And then that at some level, we know we owe a debt of gratitude to those smaller churches that kind of preserve things that we've moved away from and we admire the simplicity of them. But at the same time, we think they're a little backward and they're behind the times.

And so the sort of cultural narratives that we have worked their way into our understanding of ministry in the church. And it takes some real self-reflection to sort those things out. I'm listening to you talk about the urban and the rural and the enemies that are out there. You know, one side looks at the other and the political stuff and the social upheaval and the Supreme Court, you know, all that stuff that's going on. And I'm wondering, OK, how do I live? You know, I don't even want to talk on Facebook about anything important, you know, in politics or even in religion. You say one thing in religion, you get 50 people, you know, bashing you over the head. How do I live in a unifying way without becoming milquetoast or how do I really make a difference in the relationships that I have? You know, that's what this program is all about is relationships. How do I make a difference even in my own family where people disagree with me about this and we're dis-unified?

What do you think? I think that there are two things that I talk about in the book that I think are great sort of practical ways forward. And one of those things is you don't have to leave your room, wherever you are right now, you can do this, is to pray for specifically those people and places that frustrate you the most. And so without very much reflection, I think we could all think of either that political group, that region of the country, that person on Facebook that always posts things and every time they do, your blood pressure goes up. You know, there's somebody out there or some group out there that just drives you crazy. And I think the first thing that I would recommend is start praying for that person, place or group.

I tell the story in the book about a time when I was in elementary school that a classmate of mine was just bothering me and I don't even remember the details, but I complained to my mom about it because I wanted her to feel sorry for me. And she said, well, let's pray for him, which was not what I wanted. And so we did and we started doing it regularly and I don't remember if the circumstances changed, but I do remember distinctly that my attitude toward him changed gradually so that instead of being annoyed with him all the time, I was compassionate or empathetic.

I just felt more invested in him. And so I think the first thing that we can all do that doesn't cost anything, it doesn't require any sort of new engagement with culture or anything is just to start praying for the people or the things in our life that really cause us, you know, frustration, anxiety. My question is, what do we pray for?

Because I can hear some listeners say, oh, I pray for them. I pray God will eliminate them. That's right. There's all those, yeah, the imprecatory Psalms, right? Yeah. Burn down their cities and do that.

Right. That's less helpful, I think, than the great Psalms that talk about praying for Zion, right? Praying for the city of David and praying that God would restore its walls and that God would bring peace and prosperity.

And I find it really interesting that in Jeremiah, when the people are in exile in a city that they hate, that represents all the evil in the world to them in Babylon. Through Jeremiah, the prophet, God tells them, pray for the peace and prosperity of the city because when it prospers, you will prosper. And so essentially what he's saying is the way that you pray for this place that you love, Zion, pray in that way for this place that you hate. And so I would say, how do you pray for these people that irritate you? I would pray for them in the same way that you pray for your children or your grandchildren or your spouse or your friends, that God would work in their lives, that God would soften their hearts and soften your heart toward them. That whatever, if you don't know the details, it may be difficult, but if you know the details of health or struggles, that you pray for God's intervention in those things. Which is to say, pray for them like a brother or sister in Christ, even if they're not. And I think that that's where God can do something remarkable. And it may not happen in their life first, it may happen in your life first as a person praying. Good start.

What do we do next? One of the things I hope to pull out in the book is that one of the hazards, one of the mistakes that we make in these divisive discussions is that we externalize the problem. So the problem is always someone else. It's that other group that has a wrong view or it's this other place that has the wrong values or it's this other person who's always picking a fight.

The tone of our discourse publicly right now encourages that kind of externalizing. That my job is to point out all the problems with that other group. And so one of the things that I think we can do moving forward is actively self reflecting on what is it that I'm bringing to these debates and this division that's contributing to more division and more disunity and more anger and more frustration. And why am I doing that? Is it fear? Is it lack of faith? Is it hurt?

What is it? And I offer some suggestions in the book on a method for this, a prayer of examination that I like to use that kind of helps me look at my own reactions to other people. Like, why did that conversation, why did I get so angry in that interaction? And then in bringing that interaction before the Lord and letting him show me what my motives were and not that person's contribution, but my contribution to that moment. And I think as we begin to do that, we'll recognize things in us that we didn't see, which is not fun, but it's really helpful. But it also can help us to be compassionate for other people, because if we realize when I'm angry, it's because I'm fearful. Then maybe when that other person is angry, it's because they're fearful.

And now I know what that's like. I can resonate with this sense of fear that is created in our disunity. And then that gives me something concrete that I can pray for them. So it's kind of a loop, the praying for them, self-reflection, praying for ourselves. And I think that those two movements are really important ways that we can begin to heal some of these divisions. The other thing I heard you say earlier was to learn how to listen to individuals with whom we disagree and try to have a civil relationship, even though we may disagree theologically or philosophically, but at least treating them what we believe to be true, that people are people made in God's image and therefore valuable.

That's right. Yeah, giving them the common courtesy, which is, I think, less and less common, of just hearing them out. And instead of accusing, maybe asking questions, say, hey, I recognize that we disagree about this, avoiding the impulse to say, let me try to convert you to my side and say, could you explain to me why it's important to you that this thing go this certain way? And then actively listening with compassion to that answer, I think, is a really important move. Gary, this sounds a lot like what you have talked with parents about how to deal with a teenager that they can't stand anymore because of the music or the hair or whatever, and to really move into their world because you care about them.

Your teenager is not the enemy. And we're kind of talking about the same thing, don't you think? I think so, Chris. It's actually moving from monologue to dialogue. Monologue, I'm doing all the talking. You sit there and listen to me. Dialogue is, I want to know what you think.

I want to know why you think this. Tell me, why is this important to you, what you just said, Brandon. Well, Brandon, this has been a fascinating conversation, and I think this book is going to help people at least reflect upon what's going on and ask, how may I as an individual and the larger group as a church, how may we be a positive influence in the world today rather than just staying away and isolating or coming at each other with swords and guns? So thanks for your work. Keep up the good work, and thanks for being with us today. Thank you so much.

It's been a real pleasure. With all the division, the rancor, the political, social differences we have, I think Brandon O'Brien's writing and his heart come through in this book, and it'll help you navigate the next nine months and beyond. It's titled Not From Around Here, What Unites Us, What Divides Us, and How We Can Move Forward.

And you can find out more at FiveLoveLanguages.com. And in one week, Dave and Ann Wilson want you to know the one secret that will change your marriage. We'll talk about that next time. It's a great topic. Looking forward to it, Gary. Before we go, let me thank our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Todd. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in Chicago in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.