Monday, July 28, 2025
Happy Monday, my friends! One of the constant refrains we hear and advice we’re given is that we need to get out of our echo chambers and listen to the thoughts of others. Progressives are particularly bad at this because we will find spaces where people talk about “diversity,” but who rarely if ever experience the words and voices of diverse authors and commentators. I continue to be surprised by how people who actively fight book bans have never read a book by a BIPOC, Queer, or international author. Yes, I see you white liberals patting yourself on the back because you’ve read a book by Barack or Michelle Obama. You could still do better. No matter our commitment to free speech, the free press, and the free exchange of ideas, we still retreat into our caves and watch shadows on the walls.
Discussing books which are “fashionable” and being read by many people, Haruki Murakami’s character, Nagasawa, says, “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”[1] For Nagasawa that meant selecting books whose authors had been dead for at least 30 years. For other people that might mean selecting books from authors who hold different identities than the reader or taking stock of the books you’ve been reading and intentionally finding books from other political, religious, and social views. It also might mean following a few charitable people with whom you don’t agree on social media or periodically reading a news site or magazine with a different political or social perspective than your own.
Nagasawa is an example of an archetype often found in academic and other supposedly enlightened communities, which, yes, the church can often fashion itself. Yet, many of us don’t have the luxury to only read material that has passed the test of three decades or some other metric. To do so would be as bad, maybe worse, than containing our news consumption solely to Huff Post or Breitbart. We need to be reading and listening to many different sources and perspectives.
That said, there is a clear difference between diverse perspectives, where multiple truths can exist simultaneously, and plain error. Recently, while testifying before the House Education and Workforce Committee, US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon was asked about “viewpoint diversity.” Part of her exchange with Representative Mark Takano (D-CA) included this question and answer.
Representative Takano – “Does refusing to hire a Holocaust denier as a member of Harvard’s history department faculty count as an ideological limit test?”
Secretary McMahon – “I believe that there should be diversity of viewpoints relative to teachings and opinions on campuses.”
Denying that the Holocaust happened or that it was less gruesome and severe than it actually was, is wrong. That the Holocaust happened is no more a subjective truth claim than 2 + 2 = 4. It isn’t an ideological statement. One of the most dangerous philosophies of modernity and post-modernity has been the claim that there are no moral absolutes. For instance, it is a moral absolute that taking a life is wrong. That doesn’t mean that there are not justified reasons for taking a life or that governments, societies, and cultures can’t decide that certain types of life-taking are acceptable. Regardless of the ethical constructions which can assuage our guilt, mitigate our complicity, and even glorify our actions, moral absolutes remain. Perhaps the best way to teach ourselves about and remind ourselves about the moral absolutes which transcend culture, nation, religion, and spirituality is to read and listen to many voices where we find these absolutes and the voices who attempt to build frameworks which invalidate the absolute rather than justify certain actions. Remember, we can justify specific actions and render the people who take those actions blameless and sinless, even though the transgression remains immoral.
Who do you listen to and read? Where do you need to include other voices and perspectives?
Let us pray: God, font of truth and morality, you created our world with certain immutable truths which, like you, transcend culture, religion, spirituality, and politics. Help us find those truths, those moral absolutes in the diverse voices and people you’ve created and put in our paths. Whether we read from people long past or contemporary, whether we find truth in sages, shamans, witches, pastors, and priests, or in the quiet voices of nature and the revelations of science, grant us moments of wonder which connect us to each other across time and place. May our morality and ethics be founded as much on you as it is in the great cloud of witnesses of which we are a part. We ask this in your great name and in the name of your son, Jesus, our liberator. Amen.
Blessings on your weeks, my friends! Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.
Faithfully,
Ben +
[1] Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood, trans. Jay Rubin (Vintage Books, 2000), 31.
