How to teach college #12: Equanimity

This ends with my views on politics in general, and the 2020 election in particular. If that interests you, read to the bottom.

One early lesson I learned when I was on the debate team was that my opponent would sometimes try to make me mad, and it was urgent that I keep my cool. Coaches called it the law of inverse heat: the more heated they got, the cooler I should be. If they were tense, I should relax. If they got mad, I should smile warmly. Either their anger meant they were losing, which was good news for me, or else they were trying to rattle me, and I must block their attempt. I practiced that move over and over and over again for the nine years that I competed, then taught it to the kids I coached.

It's one of the most important lessons I took from debate into full-time teaching. From time to time, first year students who took pride in rattling the cages of their high school teachers decide to give it a try with me. Sometimes they say outrageous things. Sometimes they make a joke at my expense that clearly crosses the line from playfulness into disrespect. Sometimes they just plain get heated. My instincts kick in, and by muscle memory I execute the old familiar countermove: look directly at them with zero anger, level out my voice, convey absolute calm, and rest in my confidence that I'm the teacher, the adult in the room, and it's my job to cool the situation down.

I have a colleague who is a superb teacher, but has a bad habit of getting angry over things the students say to her. I remind her over and over again that she's not in any danger, that the college has her back, and that her students are still finding their way and are several decades behind her in maturity. (I wait to do this after the moment passes, when she's thinking clearly and seeking perspective.)

I do this because it works, because it makes me a better teacher, but most of all, because it's what the Bible tells me to do. James 1:19-20 is the key text that I go back to endlessly, and Paul focuses the same lesson on the precise setting where I spend all my daylight hours. Most importantly, Jesus had a great deal to say on the subject in the Sermon on the Mount: we'll be judged by how we manage our anger, we should settle our disagreements before we come to worship, and we should bless people who treat us spitefully. It's far from easy to do, and there clearly are episodes in my life where I've lashed back in the heat of the moment, but anyone who teaches is well served by a trained-in response to plant your emotional feet firmly under you, take a student's cheap hit, and refuse to escalate.

That's been on my mind a lot lately, because the election is getting closer.

I have this fantasy where God offers to let me ask a question, and He'll amplify it in the ear of every other follower of Christ alive today, and prod them until they answer. If it ever came true, I know exactly what I would ask.

When will we get tired of being played?

When will we stop taking the bait? When will we plant our emotional feet under us and stop responding so predictably to provocation?

Political campaigns in 2020 run on a single driver: hostility. Identify the enemy, spark anger, pour fuel on the fire, and then give your voters a link to make their donation and a reminder that it's election day. They'll part with their cash and give you their votes if you channel their rage.

This should not work on Christians. It is disgraceful, it is to our deep shame that it works on us even more than it does on people the Gospel has never reached. We have zero excuse to take this bait, and it is long past time that we started holding one another accountable for it with great fierceness and fervor.

Go back and read James 1:19-20. Pray over it. Pray God will convict us all of our failure to obey what it very clearly commands. Look in the mirror and ask if what James says has governed your participation in political talk, your thought process in picking a candidate. If you're reading, listening to, or watching political commentators, are they modeling what James describes? How about the leaders you support? If not, why are you supporting them?

I get the sense that in a lot of instances, people are troubled about the stance they've taken, the news they consume, even the leaders they support, but they're taking refuge in angry stubbornness because opening up to questions feels like more uncertainty in a time where it feels as though we really can't stand any more.

The trouble with that excuse is this: the Bible calls us to repent.

Jesus loves us beyond what we can imagine, beyond what we can feel, but Jesus also preached repentance. Jesus saved the life of a woman caught in adultery by confounding her accusers, but then He told her to go and sin no more. We can be forgiven for the ways we fall short, but we cannot use our stubbornness as a refuge. We cannot keep consuming political opinion content and watching political rallies for our comfort food.

I lived in Nacogdoches, Texas for eight years, and now I've called Eugene, Oregon my home for thirteen. I've lived among chicken farmers and aging hippies, and in both places I made friends and talked politics. In Nacogdoches, I taught the boys' high school Sunday school class for one of the larger Baptist churches in town, so although they knew I had liberal leanings, they trusted my values, and I treasured that trust. One thing about which I am positive, and which Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 12, is that we all need one another. We are neighbors, not antagonists. We must explain our priorities, our worries, our sense of whether our community is headed uphill, and if not, what we need to do to correct course. When liberal officeholders are in power, people with conservative views can offer necessary warnings and reminders, and the same is true when conservatives hold the majority. But that happens only when two things are true: everyone believes that everyone involved wants the community to thrive, and people put a functional and healthy civic spirit above having their precise way on every issue in every particular.

This is not something we're going to get right every time. Believe me, I know it. Among other things, I teach conflict, and I am keenly aware of how ugly and dysfunctional it can be. The very ugliest conflicts are those in which people give full vent to their anger and make all their decisions, starting at word choice and spiraling upward, to injure the other party. It's what the Bible very clearly rules out as impermissible, and it is the order of the day in American politics. And American evangelical Christians are in the thick of it, leading the charge. And that gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that just seems to strengthen every time I get a fresh dose of it.

If I haven't lost you yet, I challenge and urge you to read 1 John 4:7-21 slowly, attentively, and then go back and linger prayerfully a little longer over verse 20. After that, take stock of how much political discourse is fueled by hatred, and how weak and half-hearted we have been at opting out, at withholding our assent from voices that inflame it. And be honest with yourself: have your political views crossed over into hatred? If they have, take one more look at verse 20 and make up your mind what to do about that. It won't wait.

On most of the hot button issues that grab attention in this election, or any election, I agree with some of my fellow believers and disagree with others, and I want very much to do so respectfully. Occasionally I may fail miserably, but I will always keep trying. But on the single issue that Christians must not let our anger drive our engagement with our neighbors, I cannot disagree respectfully; I simply don't see another reasonable position. The Bible does not permit any other position. And right now the situation is very bad, and we must be counter-cultural. We must speak up, we must hold each other accountable, we must withhold our votes from candidates, and switch the channel away from commentators, who craft their messages to maximize rage and hatred. Our failure to do so is a profound betrayal of what we have been taught, of the love and forgiveness we have been shown.

It is simply not okay.