Our house is full of arguments. In this, I’m pretty sure we are no different from most families. We argue over who sits where in the car. We argue over who has the most roast potatoes. We argue over football, homework, housework, and scrabble.
We argue mostly at table, when we eat, where the conversation might take in politics as well as roast potatoes, and the arguments are sometimes very heated. We take arguing seriously. We yell.
However, I’ve also known families where there’s little or no arguing and it makes me feel as if I might perhaps be deeply dysfunctional and just dealing, shoutily, with my own, profound, unresolved anger issues. I sometimes wonder whether I should just stop arguing altogether.
Then a few days ago I saw Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, being interviewed by fellow Pause for Thoughter Kate Bottley and taking questions from an audience of Christians at the Greenbelt Festival. And as I listened, I heard the church unpack some of its dirty laundry as the Archbishop tried graciously to help sort through it. The church, like our family, is full of arguments.
I wondered whether this should really be the case, so I looked in the Bible and I realised that in the long story of God and humanity, people have never stopped arguing. And not just with each other. They argued with God.
Abraham argued with God. Gideon, the smallest member of the least important family in Israel argued with God. St Peter argued with Jesus.
But what’s interesting is that when they argued, God listened. He didn’t just argue back louder. And he didn’t storm off in a huff. When Gideon walked out on God in the middle of an argument, God said, ‘I’ll wait until you return’. And in that, God differs, crucially but unsurprisingly, from me and my family. He usually wins as well, which differs from me quite a lot.
So I reckon I might usefully adopt God’s strategy – learn to listen, not just to argue. I may not succeed. I haven’t so far. But I do have a renewed sense that if we, if I, listen to the other side of the argument then family life – to say nothing of public life – might be immeasurably improved.
But you can disagree with me if you like.
The picture is a detail from Donatello’s Apostles’ Door in the Old Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence (bronze, 1440-43)