Let's Be Different

Photo by Rupert Britton on Unsplash

[The following remarks were given at Asbury University’s start-of-year staff and faculty worship gathering—August 10th, 2023]

I view these beginning-of-the-year messages as an opportunity to set the tone for how we enter a new season of university work. As we start this school year—hopefully well-rested and rejuvenated after an historic, and exhausting, spring semester—there are many things to consider. We could talk about “The Outpouring.” We could think about Artificial Intelligence, its growth, and the implications for our work. I could reflect upon the ever-shifting landscape of higher education—what we must do differently; what we should sustain. And, of course, you can never go wrong with devotional comments to hopefully edify and encourage the community. 

But there is something more urgent to me—you might even say “burning in my bones”—that I want to share this morning. We are entering another political season, one that will be marked with familiar tropes such as “the stakes of this election are higher than ever”—or vicious attack ads demonizing opponents. And in addition to familiar election characteristics, this season will undoubtedly be marked by hostility and a lack of trust or goodwill. 

Considering this moment and its unsavory characteristics, I want to open by referencing a poem by that great 20th century mind, W.H. Auden. The poem is called The More Loving One. Auden describes someone whose feelings for another are not returned—what he refers to as “indifference.” However, some of the poem’s expressions do not signal indifference so much as they characterize contempt. This context—bearing the contempt from another, even a loved one—makes this important line from Auden even more powerful: “If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.”

Contempt is an appropriate word for our moment. Contempt is poisonous, destructive. Some of you may be familiar with John Gottman, the family therapist who can predict divorce (quite accurately!) based upon observing spousal interactions. He identifies contempt as the top predictor of divorce. It is, he says, “sulfuric acid” for relationships.

Last year, a FiveThirtyEight poll identified political division as one of the more pressing challenges on the minds of Americans. This is not just disagreement, write the authors, it is “hatred.” Indeed, our political differences are characterized by something much more severe than mere disagreement or indifference. Rather, opponents are what Alan Jacobs calls RCOs, “repugnant cultural others.” We despise those who do not share our views. 

This, of course, is fueled by social media, whose business model is organized around outrage content that shocks the limbic system and rewards users for public scorn. In an interview, technology ethicist Tristan Harris makes the point that social dysfunction is a feature, not a glitch, of a social media system organized around attention, toxicity, and derision—not truth and humane dialogue. Harris writes, “[W]hen we are addicted, outraged, polarized, anxious, misinformed, validation seeking, and not knowing what’s true…[we are] success cases of a business model that was trying to get…attention.” In light of this, the techno-optimistic characterization of social media platforms like X—formerly known as Twitter—as a “digital town square” seems, at best, an egregiously misleading euphemism. 

The thing is, I don’t need to go on. I don’t need to provide more and more data points to make my case. We all know—and we all feel—a divided, acrimonious, fractured environment marked by fear, distrust, suspicion, and angst. Contempt. Sadly, the Christian faith often mirrors the discord we see and feel in our country. This is what I want to talk about. You see, in the Christian faith tradition, unity is not an aspiration. It is an expectation. 

Any considerate reading of Scripture will reinforce that we are called to be different—a people holy and set apart who reflect the character of God. With this enduring truth in mind and considering the moment we are in, I want to open our time together this year with a vision. It is a vision of community marked by humility, charity, conviction, and elevated affections to “seek the things that are above” (Col. 3:1) and “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts” (1 Peter 3:14-16). 

Among many other things, here is what I think this could look like. 

“Warmheartedness” 

This is an expression used by Arthur Brooks. Warmheartedness is a relational overture—a movement toward others. Seeking to come near; not seeking to create distance. Softening your heart; being “warm” to another. In his book Love Your Enemies, Brooks gives a simple but powerful example of what this looks like. In the early 2000s, Brooks published a book about charitable giving that, surprising to him, gained a lot of national attention—much of which was negative.

On one occasion, he received an email that opened with the following: “Dear Professor Brooks, you are a fraud.” It was a scolding 5,000-word critique with chapter-by-chapter detail alleging Brooks’ failure as a scholar and the perceived flaws in his research (with the implication that he was also just a bad person).

How was Brooks going to respond? He considered three options. First, he could ignore him (delete and move on). Second, he could insult him (“Get a life”). Third, he said, was the option to destroy him (pick a few of his most glaring errors, mockingly throw them back in his face, and punctuate his remarks with a well-placed insult, e.g., “Next time you pick a fight with a real economist, make sure you actually know what you are talking about”).

But Brooks chose a fourth option. Thank him. In response to the contemptuous, unsolicited 5,000-word rant, Brooks expressed gratitude for the attention to detail they gave to his book. And not just reading it, but carefully focusing on each chapter with such thorough detail. This, of course, is always a great compliment to an author who has committed so much time, energy, thought, and emotion to a project.

Moments after Brooks wrote a reply of gratitude, he received an email response that was friendly, thankful, and amazingly, ended with an invitation to dinner if Brooks was ever in their local area. In sum, he went from being “a fraud” to a friend—all because of an overture of warmheartedness. 

But don’t miss this. In Brooks’ example, warmheartedness “worked.” It deescalated anger, averted additional conflict, and led to a friendly, more humane, outcome. But we should not adopt a warmhearted disposition because it works. We should take on these attributes and make relational overtures towards others—even to those indifferent or contemptuous towards us—because that is the character of Christ.

Recall the attributes of godly wisdom in James 3: pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy, full of good fruits, no partiality, no hypocrisy. There is no condition to this. There is no “if” to these character traits. Similarly, there is no condition to the “Fruit of the Spirit.” There is no condition to Christ’s character mandates in the Sermon on the Mount (“You have heard that it was said, but I tell you…”). As imitators of Christ, this is who Christians are called and challenged to be.

Shared Affection for Christ

In relation to faith communities, I confess that I personally have never liked the phrase “the middle way”—an approach purporting to avoid excesses of left and right. This might be an unfair judgment, but the expression seems to locate thoughts, words, and actions in reference to a political spectrum. I don’t want to talk about our identity in relation to political categories; I want our self-understanding to be defined in relationship to our proximity to Christ and participation in the life of God. And I am not just talking about what we think about Christ or the things we do in the name of Christ—as important as those are. I am primarily talking about our shared affection for Christ.

In his book Confessions, St. Augustine of Hippo emphasizes the importance of ordinate affections (what Wesley described as “holy appetites”). A rock’s weight makes it roll down a hill; the weight of a fire’s smoke makes it rise toward the sky. A thing’s weight, says Augustine, “urges” it to its place. “My weight,” says Augustine, “is my love.” We go where our desires, our affections, and our loves take us. So, what do we love? And where is our love taking us? “One has only the choice between God and idolatry,” writes Simone Weil. “There is no other possibility. For the faculty of worship is in us, and it’s either directed somewhere into this world, or into another.” 

Years ago in an interview, the author Garth Greenwell said, “I have always been possessed of a devotional temperament with no bearable object of devotion.” It is a profound quote. I want to suggest we all have a devotional temperament. To be human is not just to think—it is to love, to desire, to orient ourselves towards that which we deem as ultimate. So, the question is not whether we have a devotional temperament—the question is what object bears our devotion, our love, our worship? 

Above all, does Christ have my affection? Above all, does Christ have our affection? In this sense, we should be less considerate of the horizontal axis of left to middle to right and vice versa, and rather concern ourselves with the vertical axis. How close can we get to God? How close can we mirror His holy character? How close can we pattern the unity between God the Father and Jesus the Son in our own community? The goal is not middle. The goal is not to strike a balance. The goal is vertical. “I lift mine eyes to the hills!” says the Psalmist (Psalm 121:1).

Though he often preached at Oxford University, Dwight L. Moody was not very polished with his language as he did not have a great deal of formal education. He was known for making statements that were grammatically clumsy or lacking in eloquence. Statements like, “Don’t think that God don’t love ya, cause He do!” Sometimes among Oxford students, when a statement violated a law of the English language, students would stomp their boots on the floor to register their disapproval. And when Moody spoke, the joke was that sometimes there was more stomping than preaching!

After one such message, a young man boldly approached Moody and provided him a list of speaking errors for his consideration and correction. Moody got down on his level and pulled him in. “Young man, I am using all the language I have for the glory of God,” he said. “Are you using all the language you have to the glory of God?” That’s it. All of me for all of Him. All of us for all of Him. All of us for all the world. Can God look at our school, our staff, our faculty, our students—our community—and say, “I have them”? That is, does God have our shared affection, sacrifice, and commitment?

A Counter-Balancing Community for a Full Scriptural Witness

Importantly, considering this moment, our community cannot be left vs. right, red vs. blue. If we fall into those grooves, we won’t survive and we certainly won’t thrive and flourish. If we lack trust, cultivate suspicion, and foster gossip, factions, clicks, and “out-group hostility”—we cannot and should not expect a flourishing future as a Christian university that seeks to take both of those descriptors—Christian and university—seriously. 

But within the community, if some of us emphasize the importance of avoiding dogmatism (the late Nazarene Professor Richard Taylor said dogmatism is “when we stop listening”), and some of us emphasize the importance of avoiding relativism (imbibing non-Christian ideologies and “empty deceit”; lacking conviction); or in Wesleyan terms, if some of us emphasize acts of piety (individual practices that habituate spiritual growth and maturation), and some of us emphasize acts of mercy (service, charity, works of justice); if some of us emphasize care and compassion (lovingly expressing our faith in a Christ-like manner), and some of us emphasize clarity and conviction (steadfast commitment to orthodox doctrine and a faithful expression of our tradition)—if these characteristics mark our community, if these are the tensions that bubble up, and if these are the attributes we are collectively encouraging one another toward—I humbly suggest that kind of community could hold us all accountable to the full Scriptural witness. That kind of community could be special—different, set apart, holy. There is no defined political typology for such a community—because “our citizenship is in Heaven” and it is from there that we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ (Phil. 3:18-20).

Community Virtues to Make This Possible

Finally, what are those community virtues necessary to make this possible? Remember the Cardinal Virtues? Courage, justice, prudence, and temperance. “Cardinal” comes from the Latin cardo meaning “hinge.” That is, all other specific virtues hinge upon these general virtues. So, what are the virtues that this set-apart, unified community vision hinges upon? There are many—but let me name two that are utterly indispensable. 

First, being set-apart as a community will hinge upon the virtue of humility, realistically seeing myself. This means recognizing that I am a complex personality with complicated motives. People are complex; I am people. This also means realistically seeing where I have opportunities for growth and, equally, realistically naming my fears and insecurities that often parade as moral uprightness. Perhaps for this reason Simone Weil referred to humility as “the power of attention.” 

This is why we need community. I am so thankful for our executive leadership team in this regard. They provide me with a realistic picture of myself (the good, the bad, and the ugly). Humility means that we do not exalt ourselves; we see ourselves properly. N.T. Wright has made the thought-provoking statement that if a person is sanctified, “they are probably the last to know it.” 

Second, being set apart as a community will hinge upon the virtue of charity, realistically seeing the dignity of others. That means learning to see others with the eyes of Jesus (a prayer I have prayed many times). Finding the best in others is a discipline that must be practiced and habituated. It will not necessarily come naturally. This also entails learning to challenge ideas, not people. In the world of lean management, there is a Japanese expression—Tatakidai—which literally means “beat the board.”  This is the practice of expressing an idea on a board (or piece of paper) and then encouraging scrutiny and various critical perspectives to test or “beat” the idea into a more robust form. There are several important concepts that drive this practice, including the belief that an idea “beaten up” has a much greater chance of success.  Further, and importantly, this discipline helps to separate an idea from the person who might be promoting it.  Humility and Charity are not just virtues—they are radical characteristics. “If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.”

Together

It is important for me to say this—I am not the model for the things I have described. I am not the enlightened one. I am not the objective one. I cannot do this alone. But I can do it with you. Respectfully—you cannot do this alone. But we can realize this vision, together. It is demanding—but that is what communities do. Remember when Dr. Erin Penner spoke in chapel a few years ago? Among other wisdom provided to the community, she made this powerful statement: “If your community does not demand something of you, then it is not a community.”

One of our long-time faculty members has made the simple but profound comment that “Asbury has a soul.” They are right. Our soul is an elevated affection for God (orienting our desires vertically) and an elevated affection for neighbor (warm-heartedness). It is the full formational cultivation of a student’s intellectual, spiritual, moral, and social experience. And we are investing in the next generation—the work you and I do here every day is a “living vote” for Generation Z and their potential.

We have a soul. We have our shortcomings, yes. But we have a soul. And the fact that we have a soul did not start an Outpouring in February, but I humbly believe it sustained it. Indeed, the world was watching in February. What a picture you showed them! The world is still watching us. Skeptics are still watching us. People who have been hurt, or even abused, by Christians or by the church—they are still watching us. International communities are still watching us. The church is still watching us. Our students are still watching us. Let’s show them something remarkable. 

Flannery O’Conner says, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.” Not odd as in creepy or bizarre— but odd as in men and women exhibiting a compelling peculiarity; women and men who have patterned their lives on a different Kingdom and a different citizenship with different norms, values, and virtues—what Christopher Wright calls “the prototype of the new humanity.” When students matriculate, when visitors visit, and when the public peeks in—let’s leave no doubt about who we are because of who God is. Let’s be different. We can’t do this individually; but we can do it together.

Kevin Brown is the president of Asbury University, Wilmore, KY