Spiritual Conversations During the Holidays
By David Baggett and Paul M. Gould | Bulletin Roundtable
With Thanksgiving and Christmas approaching, when we often see extended family members and others that we only see during the holidays, it can be challenging navigating conversations that come up around spiritual topics. With that in mind, we asked two of our contributors to share their advice for handling spiritual conversations on these occasions. In the spirit of the season, they also shared one thing they’re thankful for this year.
David Baggett
So this month’s Roundtable topic is how to handle spiritual conversations during the holiday gatherings, and we are also to share something for which we are especially grateful this year. Regarding the latter, I am genuinely grateful to be part of the Worldview Bulletin team. One of the greatest joys in my professional career has been collaboration. Between articles and books, I have co-written and co-edited with a whole slew of scholars—from my wife to Jerry Walls, Phil Tallon to Bill Drumin, Mark Foreman to Ronnie Campbell, Jonathan Pruitt to John Hare, Greg Bassham to Tom Morris, Antony Flew to Gary Habermas, and more. I didn’t realize when I started my career how much I would treasure and relish such collaborations, nor how many there would be, but they have become a real earmark of my work and joy of my life. The nature of scholarly work is often solitary, and these joint efforts have been good for my introverted soul. Teaming up almost inevitably results in a more creative and fertile synergy that generates better work than it would have otherwise been.
A few years ago when I was asked to join Chris Reese, Paul Gould, and Paul Copan at the Worldview Bulletin, I could have scarcely imagined then what a blessing it would turn out to be. Despite our physical distance, becoming part of this community has been an unmitigated joy. Once more it’s helped inspire better work, and the satisfaction and fulfillment that comes from iron sharpening iron and mutual support in service of a shared vision and mission about which we are all passionate. The recent addition of Melissa Cain Travis, whom I greatly appreciate and respect, will make the team all the stronger and the fruit all the greater. I have been reading and relishing of late her delightful book Science and the Mind of the Maker. So the great gift of being part of this community is that for which I am especially grateful this year.
Regarding spiritual conversations with family during the holidays, I am reminded of a recent book I read that had for its genesis a Thanksgiving family get-together in southern Ohio. It took place in the home of Bart Campolo and his wife, who were hosting his parents, the famous evangelical sociologist Tony Campolo and his wife. I grew up watching Campolo and always found his histrionics and iconoclastic rhetoric entertaining and challenging. In more recent years Tony changed his stance on homosexuality and was, to my thinking, rightly criticized for it. Setting that aside, though, Tony has a long track record of evangelism and stirring people to care for the marginalized and oppressed.
I saw Tony speak in person when I was in seminary many moons ago. I recall that he got the crowd laughing right off the bat. In his inimitably rapid-fire fashion, he practically yelled that physicists tell us that the faster to the speed of light an object travels, the more mass it obtains. Then, mischievously looking over at the corpulent pastor, pausing for comedic effect, he added, “Pastor, you’re not fat! You’ve just been moving too fast!”
His son Bart had, for a long time, served as Tony’s right-hand man, but as the years went by Bart’s faith quietly waned. It was a Thanksgiving evening in 2014 when Bart, in his old three-story house in an “at-risk” Cincinnati neighborhood, told his parents that he no longer believed in God. The first chapter of Why I Left, Why I Stayed is Tony’s poignant account of that evening. Bart had long served in ministry, doing outreach to the poor and proclaiming the Christian gospel alongside his famous father, and had exerted a significant impact in the lives of many. This made it all the harder for his dad to reconcile what he was hearing. It was overwhelming and painful, leaving Tony reeling, feeling “bewildered and unsure.”
After the excruciating conversation, Tony and Peggy spent a lot of time praying, determined that they would love their son unconditionally just as he was. Of course, though, this didn’t mean Tony wouldn’t try to get to the bottom of some things. He had questions. What had led to his son’s decision? Could he get Bart to reconsider? Had Tony failed somehow as a father? Before long an editorial in Christianity Today suggested that if Tony hadn’t focused so much on social issues and concerns for the poor, Bart might not have departed from the faith. Tony admitted this was painful to read because it made him question whether he had been a good father.
Soon after that fateful Thanksgiving, Tony booked a weeklong speaking tour in England, and Bart happily agreed to tag along so they could spend time in substantive conversation. And so, in a succession of English parks and cafes, they shared with one another their innermost feelings and most deeply felt convictions. In our cultural moment, such candid, caring conversations are often hard to come by, riddled as it is with so much divisiveness and animus, tendentiousness and acrimony, among those with conflicting worldviews. But this is a father and son determined to forge such conversations.
I find this very dynamic one of the most compelling features of their relationship and the book that came out of that Thanksgiving conversation: the model it provides for such challenging but valuable discussions. In both its spirit and execution theirs is an eminently attractive picture of familial commitment despite deep differences, the diametric opposite of and efficacious antidote for our reigning, pervasive, and far too unimaginative “cancel culture.”
No matter what, our families need to see us as Christians reflect Christ during the holidays. It is often said that discussions about sex, religion, and politics are to be avoided in polite company. With family they are all by turns liable to come up. Fine, I say, have at it—unless you can’t figure out a way to discuss such matters with equal commitments to truth and love. And if so, I might suggest that you flip on the football game instead.
Paul M. Gould
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” I love that song. There will be friends calling. Kids jingle belling. Hearts glowing. And loved ones are near. Oh, wait . . . and loved ones are near? Hmm. That’s not always so wonderful. For many, family relations can be difficult. It’s family after all! And it can get tense, even ugly. And for some, the coming together of extended family can also bring the possibility of colliding worldviews. So, how might we navigate these holiday interactions well? Even more, how might we point our loved ones to Jesus? I offer three ideas.
First, pray before you get together with your family. Ask God to help you love your family well. Ask God to fill you with His Spirit. Ask God to love others—including that distant cousin with all the skeletons in the closet—through you.
Second, serve well. Think of others before yourself. Come ready to serve: grab an apron and finish that pumpkin pie, pick up the playroom after the kids scatter all the toys on the floor, wash the dishes after dinner when everyone else moves to the parlor for drinks (or the TV room; alas, who has a parlor anymore?), lead the family game, tend to the fire, or take out the garbage. We love well as we serve well those around us.
Finally, be intentional in your conversations. Ask questions. Seek to enter the world of your loved one or relative. Don’t just talk about yourself. Listen. Care. Ask about their life, their past, their story—and look for opportunities to connect their story to the divine drama. Sometimes all you can do as you listen is make statements about your faith: mentions of your trust in God, your prayers, your church, and so on. Sometimes you can steer a conversation onto a spiritual topic and engage in an in-depth conversation about the things of God. When you do, remember to keep the main point the main point: Jesus is God. Man is sinful. Jesus died for our sins and offers us the gift of life. Pray and love in deed and word. That is my advice. It’s not very special advice. It’s what I try to do, and do imperfectly, in all my relating with others. Sometimes it’s good to remember that we need to/can do that with our family too.
Finally, Chris asked us to each share one thing we are thankful for during this season. I’m going to share two. First, I’m thankful for my family. Not just my immediate family—my wife Ethel and our four kids Austin, Madeleine, Travis, and Josh—but my extended family: my parents, Ethel’s parents, my brother and his family, my sister and her family. We’re not perfect. Not all of us are on the same page when it comes to God. But we care about each other and seek to be a support in the good and bad times. For that I am thankful. Second, I’m grateful, as I get older, for the moments of exhale. The moments where God quiets my heart and allows me to rest in Him, or to see a glimpse of His glory, or to experience delight in His world. May you too see the people and things in your life as gifts from a good and loving God this season.
Image by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay
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