Understanding the Other
“The price you pay to understand someone is sharing their feelings.”
Charles Bowden
I had come to the end of a long and unsettling day of doctors appointments and other terrors when someone sent me the link.
It was a page full of recorded interviews with Bowden so the refuge of sleep would have to wait.
I listen to Bowden like some listen to a favorite teachers sermon…with anticipation, expecting to learn something I didn’t know before from someone much wiser than myself.
He was talking about how he interviewed people for his stories , those stories that in the words of another wordsmith “make you feel like the book is about to explode into flames while you’re reading it”.
“The price you pay to understand someone is sharing their feelings.”
The words exploded in my head and I got up and posted the quote to Facebook.
It sounded like something from “Chicken Soup For the Soul”… but unless in your soup the chicken is still alive and screaming as the knife approaches it was much different.
Bowden was talking about sharing the feelings of baby killers, cartel assassins, child molesters, rapists, and others who dwell in great darkness…as well as poor people and migrants, people striving for the light.
To truly understand them well enough to write about them, he had to enter into their feelings with them.
That exacted a heavy price on him, because he discovered that all the evils he chronicled existed in some form within himself…within all of us.
We Reformed types call this the doctrine of total depravity, the doctrine that declares that all of our human faculties are stained with sin and in need of redemption.
That…is what makes the grace of God “amazing”.
Most of us will never need to share the feelings of the kind of people Bowden wrote about.
All of us need to take his words to heart.
We are a divided people… in too many ways it’s “us” against “them”
The only way we can become “we” is by the difficult and painful duty to share the feelings of those we are separated from that we may understand each other.
We “demonize” each other…which is just another way of saying that we make those we differ with less than human.
If they are “less” than we are then we can treat them accordingly.
We betray truth as well as the faith when we do so.
As you look across the canyon separating you from whatever group you have defined as the “enemy”, unless you understand that they are defending deeply felt values and beliefs just as you are then the canyon will remain.
Your only hope is in conquest, but they may conquer you.
We who call upon the name of Christ are called to be carriers of peace and agents of reconciliation.
The first step toward both is understanding the other and that begins with sharing in their feelings.
It will take a toll, but that is the way of the Cross.
Make your own application…
How do you “flesh” out sharing the feelings of baby killers, pedophiles , people who rape and torture children?
How do I go about “sharing their feelings? ” How does that work?
I understand how God can forgive….but how do I share their feelings?
Really good post.
Nonnie,
Most of us will never have to engage with those kinds of people.
We all have to associate with people who deeply disagree with us on issues such as immigration, abortion, war, homosexuality, and the other divisive issues of the day.
People don’t disagree with us because they are necessarily stupid, immoral, evil, or unregenerate.
They disagree because the way they feel about these issues is as deep and convicted as we are.
To find common ground for solutions and a healthy society we have to enter in to what they are feeling and why…and they must do the same for us.
What we’re doing isn’t working.
A lot of people wonder why Trump and Sanders are doing so well in polls.
It’s because they are tapping into this…they are expressing for others the feelings that they cannot express themselves.
They are bringing to the table stuff that has been buried…so whether you agree with them or not you need to listen.
Good words, Michael.
Thank you, mk!
“To truly understand them well enough to write about them, he had to enter into their feelings with them.
That exacted a heavy price on him, because he discovered that all the evils he chronicled existed in some form within himself…within all of us.”
there but for the grace of God go i … to coin a phrase … trouble is that we are all different as well as the same and the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it? Jeremiah 17:5-9
taking nothing away from the late Charles Bowden, we need to focus upon Christ, Who lifted up, draws all men… sadly, maybe we focus on our position in Christ and think that somehow we are not different, but something better than … the world of depravity is definitely,as Michael noted, not a place to go too far in
i wish that i could stand among lost souls strong and humble, reflecting Christ and drawing men to Him … but otherwise …?… i’m apt to get myself into a situation where i need to run like Joseph did from Potiphar’s wife (not a good analogy, since i’m female, but…)
good post to ponder and a good reminder – sin can destroy us all; that’s what defines it, isn’t it? the destroyer?
“sadly, maybe we focus on our position in Christ and think that somehow we are not different, but something better than”
Exactly…
Michael, this is beautiful.
One thing I am dying to know now: Where is this link? I want to hear more!
Ryan, I’ll post the page when I get home. I was up all night listening…
Interviews with Bowden
http://bit.ly/1jcrKPN
In a related vein, so many of our troops have come back from Afghanisan with troubled hearts and minds because they witnessed the widespread culturally accepted sexual abuse of children and were instructed to do nothing–to stand by and tolerate it because ‘they were our allies against the Taliban.’ It greatly eroded the morale of our soldiers and blurred whatever political/military motives were given for our presence there. I have spoken with my son, an Afghanistan veteran, and he verified the practices and cover-ups. To understand ‘them’ is an especially difficult step toward turning an entire culture inside out or right side up–a task only accomplished with divine empowerment.
This is great. The more you talk about Bowden’s grasp of our common humanity with all of our potential for good and evil, the more I see he was a special dude. I’m fascinated and need to listen to these recordings. I listened to the “Intro to Boden” recording that was posted in the “Links!” several weeks ago. Great stuff. You’ve probably said this elsewhere, but what’s a good book or two to start with?
JoelG,
He’s not for everyone.
He writes at times rather graphically about human desires, including his own.
This isn’t “Christian” material.
I would suggest “The Charles Bowden Reader”..a collection of some of his best essays on a variety of topics.
If you survive that…I’ll give you some others to consider. 🙂
Some people don’t get Bowden at all…and that’s ok.
He shakes me to my core.
His magnum opus was “Down By The River” … a book that took him seven years to write and left him bankrupt and broken.
If you want to understand Mexico and “the war on drugs”…it is the best.
This was his last work…the one that wrapped up his lifes work.
It is free to read online.
https://medium.com/matter/blood-on-the-corn-52ac13f7e643
Ok thanks for the warning and the suggestion. I will start there and let you know if I’m ready for more. 🙂
JoelG,
I had someone I recommended one of his books to call me in a state of near hysteria because she couldn’t sleep at nights after three chapters.
I’ve learned to slap a warning label on him… 🙂
My close friends and family wish I’d never found him…I carry his books around like Baptists carry Bibles on Sunday… 🙂
Understood. No worries. I try to live outside of the “Christian bubble” and recognize that the Bible itself is rate R in places, as much as we’d like to sterilize it.
JoelG,
It is more like rated X in some places…and what we don’t get is that all of that is in us.
We’re not good, we’re redeemed.
Thank you for asking about CB…I get a little over enthused about him as I regard him as a prophet from the fringe…
Well I’m glad you found him. He found El Pastor and, to me, El Pastor is a role model, from what I’ve read about him here and other place I’ve tried to find info on him.
#20 Yes I completely agree. Rated X. And yes, in all of us. CB has the balls to say it. Can’t wait to read more.
There is a new documentary out on El Pastor and Chuck.
“Dead When I Got Here”…
I haven’t seen it yet, but hope to soon.
Sweet. Gotta find it.