A Church Divided: Drs. Tim Muehlhoff & Rick Langer

OK, Dave, so we're living in a culture that's more divided than it's ever been.

Oh, yeah. Are you surprised by that? Yeah, in some ways. I think one of my surprises would be the division in the church.

And the hostility toward one another, I think, is what's been surprising to me. I mean, we've seen it in our own family. Where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. I don't think there'd be unity on most things.

That's a naive assumption. But, you know, so it's like we need direction. We need guidance.

We need some smart people to help us understand. Some men that have their doctorates. Yeah, like PhDs. Have we ever had two PhDs in the studio besides ourselves?

I can hardly contain my joy and anticipation. Have we got our PhDs yet? No. I heard they just give them out to anybody. No, the truth is, PhDs are not honorary, right? And we've got Tim Muehlhoff and Rick Langer in our studio.

And to do the work you've done to get a PhD is a real deal. Our wives can attest to that. Our wives can attest. So we are really in the presence of some real wisdom. I mean, we've been teasing about that, but we appreciate what you've done.

You've written a book called Winsome Conviction. Yeah, so welcome to Family Life Today. Well, it is great to be here. Thanks so much for letting us come and join you.

This book, I love the subtitle, Disagreeing Without Dividing the Church. So we get to talk about that and especially even dividing our families in our home. So Tim and Noreen have been speakers on the Family Life Weekend to Remember team for what, 20? Almost 27 years. 27 years.

We started speaking when we didn't know anything about marriage. Oh, Tim, we are right on the same page with you. How long have you spoken for Family Life?

31 years. Hey, Tim, this is our interview. Oh, sorry.

Just in case you're wondering. Why do you think conflict within the church is so? We'll get to that. But both of you guys are at Biola, which, you know, we, Tim had us come out a few years ago and through your marriage in, what do you call it, the marriage center? The Center for Marriage and Relationship.

And Rick's out there as well. You're in biblical studies. That's your degree in theology? So my PhD is in philosophy, but I was a pastor for 20 years. I have a background in theology as well. And so about 15 years ago, I went from the pastor to being a professor at Biola and deal with the integration of faith and learning, how our faith intersects kind of the best of human learning. It's a great thing to do at a university.

Yeah, sure is. And how did you guys come together to write this book? You know, we did a lot of things together actually just at Biola. So you like each other, huh? Well, we wrote a book on conflict based on experience.

What can you say? No, Tim and I worked a lot with doing classes and things like that, or we co-taught various classes. And one of the things that we really enjoyed was thinking through some of the challenges we faced. And we wrote an earlier book called Winsome Persuasion about how we communicate to the non-Christian world about Christian conviction. Coming out of that, we were talking to people as we were talking about the book and people were saying, yeah, you know, this isn't a problem that's just out there.

This is a problem within the church. And that's what got us thinking about this follow-up book called Winsome Conviction. Yeah, well, let's talk about that.

I mean, even the title tells you a lot. Winsome Conviction. So define that a little bit, like convictions, winsome, how do we do it? Because in some ways that's where we get in trouble, right? We have a conviction and we end up in a fight. We're not always winsome.

Yeah. So Americans feel this. A national survey was done last year. 98% of Americans, think about that, at a time we don't agree on anything. 98% of Americans will say incivility is a problem in our country.

68% say it's at crisis levels and 42% say I do not feel safe sharing my perspective about politics, immigration, whatever, publicly. Now we all hear that and say, well, of course, when non-Christians talk, yeah, of course incivility is going to be a big issue. But it has absolutely come into the church. Oh, yeah. I know a Christian who loves the Lord, is in full-time Christian ministry, and we had to hang up on the phone because it just got heated and we finally just agreed to cut it off, which is a good, you know, technique we know in marriage is let's call a time out.

Yeah. And we needed to do that, but that's why we wrote the book. And Rick's been a pastor for 20 years. You know, you guys, your work in the church.

I was an interim teaching pastor for two years at two different churches, and I got a chance to dip my big toe in it. And I was shocked, Dave, just like you, not that the arguments would be there, but the intensity. And I'm not even talking to you anymore when we cross paths going into church. And we've got to address that. Right. And what we've experienced, and it's what you're just saying, is there are topics that we don't bring up in our family. I mean, seriously.

You just avoid them. Oh, absolutely. And it's because it's like we're going to hang up the phone or we're going to have to walk out of the room because we've gone there enough times to know it doesn't end well. And so when I pick up your book, Winsome Conviction, I'm like, maybe we're doing this wrong. Maybe we're not winsome. Maybe it's, you know, of course we think it's their fault. It's got to be their fault. But maybe it's our fault.

So help us understand that, because that is too common. We're hanging up the phone. We're slamming down our fists. We're walking out of the room, not just in the workplace, but in our churches and in our homes. And let's just say this. The social media today, I mean, we are just attacking one another and the church is attacking one another.

And it's like, what's the solution? Well, let me begin by just pointing out, we come up with a lot of things that we look at Christians doing badly and we are just like the world. So we'll talk about this with divorce or with premarital sex in our teenagers or whatever.

I'm like, oh, it shouldn't be this way. The interesting thing with our quarrels about convictions is in some ways I think Christians actually have a bigger challenge when it comes to convictions in the non-Christian world. And let me explain, especially between Christians.

Here's the deal. A non-Christian who's thinking of their convictions says, well, what do I think about this? And they might read this book or that book. And basically you develop your conviction to please yourself, not to necessarily make you happy, but just to what you find to be reasonable, good and right. To make sense of everything. To make sense of the world. And I'm the end of that.

You are the court of appeal that it goes to. So a Christian decides to form a conviction. And honestly, I don't care what I think. I care what Jesus thinks. So I have inconvenient convictions, convictions I don't like particularly.

Oh, that's a good way to say it. I believe in hell. But I'm like, look, I don't really have a choice. And there's all kinds of things I read in the Bible that I wouldn't have thought up.

Many of them over the course of years I've learned to treasure. I realize, oh, that was a problem that I couldn't have thought that up. But it doesn't change the fact that I'm looking to please Jesus. So if you have the audacity to have a different conviction than I do, what you're really telling me is not you disagree with my conviction, but you disagree with my vision of Jesus. You're telling me I got my God whom I worship wrong.

Well, how's that going to go? And so you realize, man, this upscales significantly. And we do the same thing biblically because we're appealing not just to a book, but the book. A book of absolutes. So you read your Bible and think that we should care for the poor. I read my Bible and think that we should be preaching the gospel to tribes across the world. And suddenly we see these things differently. And it's like, oh, but if you're telling me the Bible says that and I'm telling you it says something different, one of the other verses is a false prophet.

So you can just see the whole thing ramping up. And my observation is this isn't an indictment of Christians. This is an observation about the way we navigate these things. But it makes it way harder to have a disagreement about our convictions.

Yeah, so that's reality. I mean, we're all nodding our heads going, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. And we do have the book and all of us hold it in high esteem.

So we want to honor the truth in that book. So what do we do? You've described the problem, you know? So here we are. We're sitting at a dinner table.

Dr. Muehlhoff. Yeah. We find a person with a PhD in communication to solve it for you. So you know how you have these marital disagreements?

We haven't ever had one, Tim, but I'm sure you and Noreen have. Yes, sorry. And you just go, wait a minute, that is not what I said. I just, no, you said that.

Or I said it, but that's not what I meant. Two Christians can go to the exact same passage. Let's take Romans 9, 10, and 11, some of the most controversial chapters of the New Testament because it deals with sovereignty, predestination, words like that. You can have two scholars who know their Greek better than you can ever imagine. They will both look at 9, 10, 11 and say, Paul actually means the exact opposite of what you're saying.

And the Greek does not mean what you say it means, or you're using it in a way that I totally disagree with. So now you both look at the same passage and you're like, we're speaking an alien language because Paul did not mean that. That's what's so hard when it's families because you both are quoting the Bible, which we used to think is like a mic drop, right? Hey, I'm gonna quote a passage, boom. But when it's your spouse, child, coworker, and they go, yeah, my Jesus doesn't believe in that.

That's when it gets hard. So one of the things we're gonna have to do is we're gonna have to affirm their relationship. We're gonna have to step back and say, listen, we're a married couple and we seek first Jesus's kingdom.

We're committed to Jesus's purposes. Now what we're doing is probably ranking these differently is where the tension is gonna be. So I do think it's important to step back and say, hey, we really do like each other as coworkers.

I love you as my son or daughter. We're just having a bona fide disagreement. And we think at the Winsome Conviction Project, that's not always bad to have what, Rick, why don't you describe a little bit where you say an authentic disagreement. Yeah, one of the biggest problems we have in these sorts of areas is the failure to actually achieve disagreement because we don't really understand what the other person's saying. And until I can articulate it in a way that you nod your head and say, yep, that's it.

And also you've captured my feeling about it. You know, if I'm all charged about it and you give me this flat statement of it, it's like, no, you haven't gotten it. So can I actually articulate the viewpoint of a person who I do not hold in a way that they say, yeah, you understand. And I tell people, look, until you can do that, you haven't actually disagreed because you don't know what they think. And you can't disagree if you don't know what they're thinking.

So make the effort to actually understand. And that involves listening. Often the hardest part is actually empathizing. People on the opposite side of these contentious issues, you have a hard time wanting to feel what they're feeling. What you find them feeling is unsavory to you. I was going to say, because you could be listening and I've heard a lot of people, I could say something and they'll say, well, that's stupid. Yeah, so listening doesn't solve it, right? Exactly. And then you feel rejected, so you pull back and then that animosity builds up. See, that's the winsome part.

That's what we mean by winsome. So communication is always on two levels, not one. There's the content, which would be, that's my interpreting Jesus this way.

My content is I vote this direction. But the relational level is the amount of respect between two individuals, the amount of acknowledgement and the amount of compassion. When Deborah Tan in the Georgetown linguist describes today as the argument culture, she's mostly saying we failed on the relational level. Americans have always disagreed with each other.

The church has always had disagreements. She feels like it's a failure of acknowledgement, compassion, empathy, because you're right. And people respond like, well, that's stupid. Or you got to vote.

You have to do this. And it's like, well, no, I don't have to do anything. And that's where the tension comes in. So we want to slow people down, give them a speed bump.

So we work with a large Christian high school in California to help teachers know how to talk about the upcoming election, this was before the election, how to talk about it with themselves and with students. So we came up with a four-step method. And when it would really get going, one guy said to me, can I just say what I want to say? And it's like, yes, but you got to do these four steps. Well, that's interesting because in marriage, people say the same thing. My friend used to say to me, I don't want to have to just put it in this beautiful little package.

I'm like, well, you don't have to, but you're going to suffer the consequences if you just let it all out. And you're saying this is true in any conflict. And there's a ton of biblical warrant. I mean, think about Paul. Paul says, speak the truth, content, do it in love. Peter says, yes, I want you to be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you, content, do it with all gentleness and reverence. Wow, I think that's fascinating. So you see content relational everywhere in the themes of the New Testament. I want to get to the four steps of the book, but I also want to make one comment that is so genius of you guys.

I mean, you know this because you know your geniuses, but it's- I like these guys. This is looking up, this is looking up, Tim. This is just simple because when you were talking about listening, empathy, restating to me, to my satisfaction that you heard me and you understand me, that's relationship. Oh yeah. You know, I mean, when that happens, even when a person does that, and it could be your spouse because everything you said is like, oh, does that have to happen in the family room with your spouse every day and your kids?

Yeah. But when my wife or my kid, or when I can restate and the person's nodding, something happens there where you're like, okay, I trust you. You cared enough to listen well. You're even capturing my emotion.

You don't agree, but you've captured it. Okay, we have a relationship that's building. It could be a total stranger, but something just started.

I'm starting to trust you. And now we can go somewhere, but if you don't do that, the relationship's not there. And now we're both sort of isolated walking away.

But anyway, that's just a comment because I'm thinking there's couples. There's couples right now that are estranged, and part of it is your spouse feels like you never really listened. Or you could say the words back to them, but you never captured how. And it could be their tone.

Like, so you're saying that, you know. And you know why she's doing that? Because she's seen me do that a thousand times.

She even did my look. That's the problem, right? Within a marriage, they know all of your tells. Yeah. They know that, oh, that's Dave's funny little smile when he's saying, I don't believe a single word you're saying, you know. And I wouldn't know that.

I don't know that about Dave, but Ann could clear that up in a heartbeat. So this is a challenge. And to do the thing and say, okay, I'm gonna take a deep breath. I'm actually going to replay it. I'm going to replay it with feeling. And you said it perfectly, David.

It's what rebuilds trust. You're like, okay, okay. Now we can go somewhere. Now we can take the next step.

But until you take that first step, the other people are like, yeah, I'm done. I'm just not taking this trip. You know what my favorite tell is? You know what my tell is? I wish Noreen were here.

So when Noreen's saying something, again, I teach communication. I know- Hey, Tim, you don't have to keep telling us that. I know. We get it. You're good.

He's telling him something. I know. I'm good at this. I'm good at this.

I know not to say to Noreen, honey, come on, that's just kind of ridiculous. Or can you just wrap this up? Because I'm about to rebut you.

I'm about to rebut your argument. I got the drop the mic moment. Here's what I do. I raise my glasses up.

I squeeze my eye. And I just say something, but you can't really understand it. Like, oh, I just- Tim, that's horrible. You know what I love about it though, Ann?

It has perfect deniability. If Noreen goes, what did you just say? I said, I'm praying for you. I'm praying for us. I'm just kind of praying. Noreen knows that's a tell.

Right? Like, oh, he just dismissed. He's not even- We use a great quote in the book. A Baptist said of an Episcopalian, I can't listen to you because of what I think you're about to say. Oh, wow, that's great. Isn't that a great quote?

That is good. So maybe we should talk about these four, and again, these four steps aren't revolutionary, but they were meant to be a speed bump before we talk about anything. Super simple. Super simple.

So it's basically just say, hey, here's what I heard you say. Here's what I thought- Oh, is this number one? This is our number one. I have my pen. Do you see me?

I love it. Write it down. Okay, structure. And you know what?

She really needs this, so give it to her. Okay, I'm ready. So first thing, and just say it. Here's what I heard you saying. Second thing, what did I agree with? And almost always, there should be some point of contact there. I won't get into quibbles about whether or not that's technically true or whatever.

I'm just saying, look, lean in. Third thing is what did you resonate with? And that's really interestingly different than what I agreed with. So for example, a person might tell you about a story about their dad who came in as an immigrant and all the challenges he faced and all that. And they're making a case for open borders sorts of immigration policies.

Well, you might disagree with that policy, but you can still resonate with the feeling of what was it like for your dad to live in a country as a 13-year-old where he didn't speak the language and didn't have a place to belong. Oh, so I resonate with that. And then you get to add your part. So first, let me play back what I heard. Second, here's what I agree with. Third, here's what I kind of resonated with, what struck me.

And then fourth, here's what I'd like to add to the conversation. And so we're doing this. It became the moderator.

We called it the speed bump. But what it really was was a self-moderation tool. And all that the people we kind of instantly appointed to be group leaders had to do is just in effect when the person said, I don't want to do this. I just want to respond. Say, you can respond. And we let you respond after you've said the other three things.

That's really wise. And so it made them pause, opens up the opportunity for hearing. The other thing it does is a reflex response is very emotive. So this gives you a pause to let your reason kick in. And without that pause, you just, you flame. And this basically is a little regulator.

It turns down your pilot light so you don't ignite the gas quite so quickly. Yeah. And the thing about speed bumps for me, I hate them. It's like when I see what I fly over, and Anne's like, what are you doing?

I'm like, what's this? Just the speed bump. But the truth is they're needed. They protect the neighborhood.

They protect, like you said, it's like, I don't always want to do this, but I need, so I'd like you to do this. Apply the speed bump. I was going to say that. Okay. Let her go. Like, will you give us an example? So let me, I'll do my position. I came out with this. And again, we should say this right away. The views represented here do not necessarily represent those of Biola University. Or a family life. Or maybe they don't even represent you guys. Maybe this is just ethereal.

They do. I'm willing to go with one. I'm willing to go for one. That got me into a lot of trouble. And you can do that because you're a doctor.

Okay. So I did not vote for president. You voted, but not for president. I voted for the down ticket, all the props, all that kind of stuff. But when it came to president, I felt I was stewarding my vote by not giving it. Like, if you're too lazy to vote, shame on you. People died for your right to vote. But people died for my right to steward my vote. And I simply don't think that these two, this is just me, these two candidates, I just couldn't vote for either for different kinds of reasons. So I purposely offered a non-vote, because to me, the narrative will never change if we just, well, I'm locked into two parties, I have to vote. No, you don't have to vote. You have to steward your vote. So believe it or not, there's a bazillion people who disagree with that and actually have gotten mad at me.

So Rick. So if Tim were to say that, let me just give my flame response. Oh, great. If random shot, Tim floats his spine and you go, Tim, if you don't vote, no one knows, your vote just simply vanishes. So it's great to say, hey, my rhetorical strategy is to withhold my vote, but no one knows that you withheld it. It's like saying, I'm not going to say this on Twitter and you don't even have a Twitter account. No one knows that you're not saying anything.

You've conveyed nothing. All right, that would tick me off. It would tick me off because it won the tone. But did you notice that like, well, then you blah, blah, blah. And Rick and I are friends.

But if I got hit with that right out of the gates, that just won't work. Right. So let me wind it back.

Okay. Option two is to say, okay, Tim, I think I hear what you're saying on this thing. And partly is you're frustrated because you feel like you can't vote for either the two viable candidates we have. And presumably if you'd voted for a third party, that's as good as wasting something, or you're actually endorsing something you actually disagree with because you don't favor the third party either. So you're feeling trapped with this thing. And I kind of agree with you on that point.

I don't feel really comfortable with either of these candidates either. So I'm feeling that. And there's your resonating. You're resonating with him. The other thing I was going to say is that- What's the agreeing part?

I'm the agreeing right now. And here's the thing. And I said, you know, honestly, Tim, I have lost sleep over this matter.

I have lost sleep over this. This really concerns me. But so I hear you, but let me say what I'd like to add on this topic is I understand that you just don't want to vote, but the bottom line is you know ahead of time one person or the other is going to become president and why not at least make the effort to tip it in the direction of whomever you feel is best because your silence just doesn't end up counting. So that's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to go ahead and vote for a candidate that I find less objectionable. Now quick point on that is notice we have a vivid disagreement at the end.

And this is why we don't just say winsome kumbaya is the name, but rather winsome conviction because we do not want to do anything to dismantle conviction. If anything, I worry that we live in the whatever generation. And what you have done by creating a speed bump is you've taken the fists down because you're ready for a fight, but you've come at it with peace as a person of peace and so the fists go down and you're willing to hear. But it won't work if I ignore it. Now we're going to respond.

This is a conversation, not a debate where it's timed and my response, your response. So I'm going to respond to what Rick just said, but if I toss out the method and just say, well, no, no, I totally disagree that my vote disappeared. Are you kidding me?

It did not disappear. Right? Now we're back to the argument culture.

So I have to force myself to go speed bump, speed bump. Okay. Here's what I'm hearing you say.

Right? And then I do it. And then he throws the ball back to me. I throw it back to him and you just keep in this. Now we feel like it's learning how to play scales on a piano, but a good jazz musician at the end, he just plays. So after a while, we hope that this becomes in a marriage with your kids.

This is just the normal part. And now we can kind of mentally go through it instead of going, okay, one, I got to say what he said to resonate, right? Hopefully it becomes like, like jazz. Well, and what I, as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking, oh, it's the fruit of the spirit. It's Galatians, it's love, it's joy, it's peace, patience, kindness. Like if we would apply these goodness, faithfulness and self-control.

Yeah. And I would just end with this. I can picture homes all around the country listening to this broadcast and having different conversations tonight in their family room. As parents say, here, here, let me teach my kids how to do a speed bump modeling of let's have a winsome conversation, not throw our convictions away and our really strong passionate beliefs, but no, hold onto those and let's dialogue. I mean, that can change a marriage.

I mean, you just modeled obviously what the Bible would teach about how to resolve a conflict. It's like this and it can be winsome. Doesn't mean it's not hard. Doesn't mean it might not get really ugly.

You might have to walk out of the room and you know, go bring that speed bump back in and start over. But right. I mean, that's where it's going to be. We got to be honest. I mean, man, if couples are doing that, families are doing that, man, I have hope. You know, you brought hope into this room. Way to go. Seriously. Thank you guys for being with us today.

Our pleasure. You know, when I disagree with someone, I don't know about you, but I can literally feel my heart rate go up. Something just bubbles inside me and I want to verbally attack and or actively defend myself. But what I really need to do is just take a breath like they were talking about. Maybe grab a speed bump and know that there are legitimate ways to disagree without division.

I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to Davin and Wilson with Tim Yulehoff and Rick Langer on Family Life Today. Tim and Rick have written a book called Winsome Conviction, and the subtitle is Disagreeing Without Dividing the Church. This book talks about how we can cultivate better understanding and compassion with people who we disagree with. Do you really think that Christian unity is possible?

Well, they do. And this book helps you to discover how we can navigate differences by speaking in both truth and love. You can pick up a copy of Winsome Conviction at familylifetoday.com, or you can give us a call at 800-358-6329. And while you're at familylifetoday.com, we'd love it if you'd partner with us and become part of the Family Life family. When you do, we want to send you a copy of Jordan Rayner's book, The Word Before Work. This 52-week Monday through Friday devotional is our gift to you when you give a gift of any amount to Family Life. Again, you can go online to familylifetoday.com, or you can give us a call with your donation at 800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. Or you can feel free to drop us something in the mail.

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Well, because we are such an informed society, we can mistakenly think we already know what another person is thinking. Well, tomorrow, Tim Muehlhoff and Rick Langer are going to show us effective ways to really listen and hear what other people are saying. That's tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.