The inescapable conclusion of curious, openhearted dialogue on politics is that conflicting opinions and data can and do exist simultaneously. When we get curious and learn about issues or people or countries from the ground up, we inevitably encounter information that seems contradictory, and it becomes difficult if not impossible to sort it in a way that only confirms what we already believe. Instead we find a universe of complexity.
Despite the presence of complexity, we live in a world that values simplicity. As soon as we are old enough to pick our favorite Disney movie and watch it on repeat, we are fed a steady diet of simple conclusions, of believing people always fall into one of two groups: flawed but lovable heroes or fundamentally evil villains. The stories are not filled with complex human beings. No one asks if Ursula maybe had some legitimate grievances or if the Wicked Witch had good qualities (well . . . not until Wicked provided us with the delightful backstory). Questions only complicate something that is supposed to be simple: the diametrically opposed sides of a binary understanding of the world. Right vs. wrong. Good vs. evil.
We wonder why kids can be so cruel when we watch them interact with one another, but we forget that we have taught them (as we were taught) that the world organizes itself in a “you’re either for us or against us” way. As parents, we struggle constantly against our instincts to simplify and separate things for our own kids. It’s hard to look at your child and say, “I don’t know” or “It’s complicated.” We want to assure them that the world is fundamentally good and we can keep them safe from everything bad. And, if we’re honest, we want the same for ourselves.
We try to convince ourselves that we see beyond black and white, but we seem to just search for more complex ways of being right and wrong. We add smaller lines of measurements along the spectrum, and we recognize new gradients of gray. However, we still operate in a world where there are fundamentally two options: true or false, right or wrong, left or right.
The problem is in that little word connecting these debates: or.
This or that. There are two choices, and you have to pick one. You can either be a Democrat or a Republican. A liberal or a conservative. How often do you turn on CNN and see the anchor placed squarely between two talking heads arguing with each other? We never see a person arguing that they agree with points being made on both sides of the aisle. In fact, using the aisle as a metaphor again illustrates our desire to formulate everything as a linear debate. Our winner-take-all elections also support the idea that there are only winners or losers in politics. Rarely do we talk about the groups in which we all coexist together—citizen, voter, American. No, we must pick a side and only one side.
We continue our devotion to this false binary in the way we talk about specific issues. You are either for something or against it. (There’s that little word again.) We all instinctively look for sides in every debate, and then ask on what side members of our tribe (be it party, denomination, or religion) fall so that we know how to orient ourselves inside the debate. We value purity in our candidates and in our discussions above all else. Not only must you pick a side, but you must commit 100 percent and, without variance, align with that side.
This kind of thinking is not bad. It’s a common strategy almost all of us use for understandable reasons. From our first breath, our brains take in an amazingly vast amount of stimuli. As babies, we have no framework with which to process all that stimuli. Even with the addition of language and maturity, the amount of stimuli we absorb, especially in our technological age, is breathtaking. So our brains use simplification and categorization to quickly process the information we take in second by second, doing the best they can with all this input.
This way of processing information means that we make mistakes in our reasoning, and the false dichotomy is a common one. We sort things into two groups—good and bad—and ignore the reality that there could be several hundred categories we’re simply ignoring. After all, of course there are more options in the American political system than Democrats or Republicans. Simply ask the 42 percent of Americans who identify as Independents (the largest number in the history of public opinion polling).1
Refusing to see the truth in both sides or rejecting the premise of sides altogether forces us into corners and harms all of us. That was the point Jon Stewart, longtime host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, made when he famously went on the popular CNN debate show Crossfire in 2004 and exclaimed to Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson, “Stop hurting America. . . . I’m here to confront you because we need help from the media and they’re hurting us.”2 Stewart went on to harshly critique the two-sided, conflict-driven approach found throughout American politics and the media’s coverage of politics. Interestingly enough, years later Begala shared his memory of the extensive conversation he had with Stewart after the show:
When the show ended, Stewart and his executive producer, Ben Karlin, sat with me and “Crossfire’s” executive producer, Sam Feist, for 90 minutes. We had the kind of thoughtful, respectful dialogue that our audience deserved but never got. It has been ten years, and I do not have contemporaneous notes. And, as we have been reminded recently, memory is a tricky and unreliable resource. Still, this is what I remember from our chat:
Stewart thought it was absurd to pretend every issue could be reduced to a forced choice between the right and the left. I thought that was a good point. Some issues have seven sides, but better to air two than none. Then he said we deliberately booked the show to provoke division. Guilty. A discussion of religion, for example, would feature a debate between, say, the Revs. Jerry Falwell and Al Sharpton, when the truth is most believers fall somewhere in between. His criticism stung because I agreed this was a major shortcoming of our program.3
Crossfire was eventually cancelled, but we haven’t gotten much better at seeing the world in all its complicated, contradictory, paradoxical glory. This alternative way of seeing things should come easily to people of faith. That God is not the Father or the Son but rather the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the paradox of faith. “Both things can be true” has become a mantra for us, and no place is that truer than in Christianity. We are asked to believe both that Jesus was fully human and the divine Son of God. We are asked to believe that Mary was both a virgin and a mother. One of our most beloved spiritual teachers is Richard Rohr, an American Franciscan friar. In his exploration of paradox in A New Way of Seeing . . . A New Way of Being: Jesus and Paul, he actually listed all the scriptures that embrace seemingly paradoxical statements:
Finding is losing; losing is finding (Luke 17:33).
The poor are rich (Matthew 5:3); the rich are very poor (Mark 10:17–25).
Hunger is satisfaction (Matthew 5:6); satisfaction is emptiness (Luke 12:16–21).
Weeping is bliss; bliss is weeping (Matthew 5:4).
The wise and learned do not understand; mere babes do (Matthew 11:25).
Folly is wisdom; the wise are ignorant (1 Corinthians 1:18–27).
Weakness is strength; strength is weakness (1 Corinthians 1:18–27; 2 Corinthians 12:10, 13:9).4
Our faiths can light the way down this third path in which we embrace paradox. Our brains might instinctually categorize in binary ways; however, our journey need not end there.
Nowhere did we find this truer than during our discussion of abortion—a topic that seems to be the ground zero for combus-tive forces of religion and politics. We often ask ourselves, does it have to be one thing or the other . . . or can we use the word and instead? One can value life and the autonomy of a woman’s body. When we release ourselves from picking, we also allow our brains to release their death grip on confirmation bias. Embracing the paradox helps us realize that politics is not a collision of good and evil; it’s a painstaking analysis of valid, competing priorities.
• • •
When we decided to discuss abortion for the first time in January 2016, we desperately wanted to avoid the traditional binary approach to this controversial subject. First and foremost, when Americans talk about abortion, we assume at the outset that there are two—and only two—sides of the debate. There are people who value life—the pro-life side—and there are people who value choice—the pro-choice side.
Those are your options; choose accordingly.
If you are a Democrat, you don’t really have a choice at all. You are pro-choice. If you are Republican, especially if you are a Republican politician, you are pro-life. Purity is of the utmost importance in maintaining this debate, so everyone has to sign on to this simplified version.
From this vantage point, the unkind and damaging characterizations of the other side seem to take on a life of their own. We almost compete to see who can villainize the other side the most. After all, if we are the good guys, then we have to have a villain. So, if you are pro-choice, the other side hates women. They want to control our bodies, force us to have babies, and create The Handmaid’s Tale here in America, complete with the funny hats, red robes, and cattle prods. If you are pro-life, the other side hates babies. They want to kill babies and spread death across America and use abortion to help maintain their sex-craved lifestyles full of orgies and forty-week abortions.
Even if we know those characterizations are inaccurate at best and cruel at worst, we still seem to accept that these are the rules of the debate. You have to be pro-life or pro-choice. You have to know when life begins and be ready to defend that position with science, Scripture, or both. You have to believe we are debating one of two things—the government making abortion legal or the government making abortion illegal. This debate is always framed as a forced binary. It’s difficult to participate in the public debate if you don’t see it so starkly.
There also seems to be an assumption that fuels the fire of this already reductive debate. In so many other areas, we are willing to accept that we all bring our diverse perspectives and experiences to a discussion and that objectivity—while a worthy goal—is something strived for but never quite achieved. However, when debating abortion, both sides seem to lose all sense of subjectivity. We aren’t debating the way we see abortion. We are debating the way things are. We use science or Scripture to argue that our side—and only our side—understands the objective reality of the situation. Of course life begins at conception. Or of course abortion is a medical procedure and nothing more. The only time we do accept personal perspectives is when we use them to bludgeon the other side with proof that our side gets it. We pass around stories of the abortion provider who had a change of heart or the pregnant abortion provider who passionately believes in choice. We post the story of the woman who desperately regrets her abortion and now marches with the pro-life movement, or we share the story of the woman who desperately needed her abortion to escape rape or domestic abuse or even death itself.
This flattens the debate into a simplistic argument between two sides: people who value life because it begins at conception and want to make abortion illegal or people who value women because life begins at viability and want to keep abortion legal. We miss (or totally avoid) a fuller picture of the world in which we live and in which we are having this conversation. We avoid the reality that sometimes we are talking about very different things. Sometimes we are talking about religion and ethics. Sometimes we are talking about laws and legislation and policy. Sometimes we’re trying to talk about both at the same time, which is doable but difficult. Because so often this debate revolves around the intersection of science and religion (throw in government, and you can see why painting this debate in broad strokes seems foolhardy), we often think about this quote from Krista Tippett, host of the podcast On Being: “And it’s not so much true, as our cultural debates presume, that science and religion reach contradictory answers to the same particular questions of human life. Far more often, they simply ask different kinds of questions altogether, probing and illuminating in ways neither could alone.”5
• • •
We started out trying to embrace the complex and contradictory nature of this debate by allowing and authentically sharing our own subjective experiences. Sarah, in particular, has extensive experience in the reproductive community that informs her opinions on the subject. After college, Sarah’s first job was running the emergency contraceptive hotline for Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina. At the time, emergency contraception was available only with a prescription, and PPCNC had a hotline that women could call to easily get a prescription. Sarah likes to say she prevented more abortions in that year than most people will in their entire lives. This Planned Parenthood also provided abortions, and Sarah worked closely with the staff, who dedicated their lives to providing reproductive care to women from all walks of life.
Since Sarah grew up in the Southern Baptist Church, working at a Planned Parenthood was a pretty strong departure from the lessons she learned about abortion as a child. However, from her time at Transylvania University as a women’s studies minor, and through her own experiences as a mother herself, Sarah has grown passionate about the importance of trusting women to make decisions for their own lives. Sharing that passion doesn’t mean Sarah is unwilling to engage in debate about abortion, as some of her closest friends are devout pro-life Catholics. It only means that understanding one anothers’ perspectives can help us create space for connection through shared experiences and values.
Beth also shared her personal journey on the issue, including being raised in a religious environment that only presented one side as an option. Abortion was not discussed often in her church. It was simply understood that abortion was wrong, but Beth was fortunate to be surrounded with loving, open-minded adults. The one Sunday school lesson she remembers on abortion centered on the duty of Christians to support people who have gone through traumatic decisions and experiences. Beth approaches the abortion discussion less as a theological question and more as a question about the power of government over individuals. Because there are so many questions about when and why a woman might need an abortion, Beth feels that abortion is a private matter. In many circumstances, Beth believes that abortion might be an ethically wrong choice, but she sees that (like many other sins) as between the people involved and the God of their understanding, rather than as a decision in which the general public has a say.
Our perspectives on this issue overlap considerably. However, instead of using that opportunity to reinforce why we are “right,” we decided to engage with the ways in which we identify and understand the values represented by both sides of the abortion debate. From the outset, we rejected the false choice of either valuing life or valuing women. We embraced the paradox, because as women, as mothers, as people of faith, and as human beings, we value both.
When we let go of that false choice, we were able to look for how our values intersect and weave themselves throughout this debate and how they can appear in both congruent and competing ways on a variety of topics. We tried to separate the two discussions Americans force together: (1) the pragmatic reality of policy in which we must find a compromise and a solution and (2) the philosophical conversation about where life begins.
On the philosophical point, Sarah spoke of her journey of faith and how she became more and more comfortable saying, “I just don’t know the answer to that question.” Beth acknowledged the importance of spiritual values and also emphasized the essential predominance of legislative values when talking about the role of government. When we made space for both the philosophical and legislative debates to coexist without the emphasis on a winner, our discussion expanded. Most importantly, we stopped fighting about where we are and where we had been and instead started talking about a path forward.
We talked about how we value women and how we value life with regard to pregnancy and childbirth. We talked about how we could better support mothers and stop saying, “All that matters is a healthy baby.” We talked about how our culture talks about sex and sexuality and how sex education could better represent our shared societal values both of life and personal decision-making.
It was the first of many discussions of abortion and reproductive rights on the podcast and many conversations that we’ve had with each other and our listeners. We’ve spoken with people who sincerely believe that all abortion must be illegal in order to protect life’s sanctity, and we’ve talked with people who believe there should be no restrictions on abortion in any context. We’ve tested our own views many times over, especially when thinking about the number of abortions that occur because of medical testing. We aren’t asking you or anyone else to change your values on this admittedly charged topic. We are just asking you and ourselves and all our conversation partners to hold on to the tension around life and birth. Whether we are discussing policy goals or philosophical ideas, let’s allow space for the ways in which this difficult issue can seem to point to contradictory and competing truths. Let’s allow space for paradox.
• • •
In February 2017 Sarah spoke with Dr. Tamara Mann Tweel, director of strategic development for Hillel International’s Office of Innovation and a professor in the Freedom and Citizenship program at Columbia University.6 In a 2012 Huffington Post piece titled “Heartbeat: My Involuntary Miscarriage and ‘Voluntary Abortion’ in Ohio,” Tamara shared how her involuntary miscarriage had led to a traumatic interaction with Ohio abortion law.7 In that piece, Dr. Tweel wrote about learning at thirteen weeks of pregnancy that her fetus was not viable. That discovery, and the attendant need to terminate her pregnancy, forced her to jump through hoop after hoop with her insurance company and the hospital to obtain an abortion. She recounted a particularly hard conversation with her doctor’s office:
I thought the political nightmare was over. I thought I could start the process of mourning. I was wrong.
Another phone call, this time from the office of the OBGYN performing the procedure. You must come in 24 hours in advance. “Why?” “To sign a consent form.” “What consent form?” Silence. “Well, you only don’t have to sign it if you were raped.” I was still completely confused. “I wasn’t raped. I don’t understand. What are you talking about?” “You are having an optional abortion right?” “No. I am having a therapeutic D&C (dilation and curettage operation to remove the fetus and womb lining) to remove a non-viable fetus.” “But the baby is alive?” “Well, according to my religious faith, that is not so.” “Is there a heartbeat?” “Yes.” “Then, I am sorry to say, you are having an elective abortion and you must sign an informed consent 24 hours before the operation.”8
After writing about her experience, Tamara was asked to testify before the Ohio state legislature about a proposed heartbeat bill, which would ban an abortion once the fetus has a detected heartbeat. She testified openly about her concerns about the legislation and her experience with already restrictive abortion legislation. The legislation subsequently passed and was vetoed by Governor Kasich.
Sarah also lost a pregnancy in the second trimester. Her fetus had already passed away, so she was not forced to go through the administrative nightmare Tamara was. However, she also had to advocate strongly for herself to get a D&E procedure instead of delivering her fetus, which her first doctor presented as her sole option. Sarah and Tamara discussed this painful topic from a place of shared experience and values. Nothing was lost by acknowledging that they both wanted their pregnancies, and they both wanted the ability to make decisions about when and how to terminate those pregnancies.
Because we began from a place of trusting one another’s motives, we could explore in a much deeper way the paradoxes involved in this difficult issue. Tamara spoke in detail about reaching out to the religious leaders in her own life to help her understand what she should do when her fetus’s heart was still beating and the doctor was telling her the fetus was not compatible with life.
Instead of seeing the issue as a binary, they encouraged her to see life as a spectrum.
I called my rabbi. I wasn’t sure how I should define life. . . . The way it was explained to me—and I’m not a rabbi—but that Jewish law really does see a continuum between potential life and actual life. But to understand something as actual life it does have to be able to breathe outside of the womb. There is a real emphasis placed on viability. So the fact that my fetus was nonviable meant for my religious leaders that I should have the D&C immediately and I should not consider it a life.9
This ability to see life itself in a more complex way opened up for Tamara a new way of thinking about the legislative debate as well.
As she said, “Moral simplicity isn’t a fair approach.” When Sarah and Tamara began talking in a deeper and more complex way, they were able to discuss all the different moral and ethical concerns and how a wider discussion that distinguishes between life, personhood, and citizenship might be a helpful direction to take the conversation.
Tamara also shared that she felt that respect for each individual’s moral complexity was missing from the legislative discussion she participated in while in Ohio. “What does it look like to really respect women going through this and assume that they are moral, ethical human beings first? That’s what really bothered me. I felt like the state had made all these assumptions about my character, and that they didn’t assume the best of me.”
Perhaps this is the paradox we must embrace in all areas of political and moral debate. People can be moral and ethical beings who simultaneously reach decisions we ourselves might find immoral or unethical.
There is nothing easy about holding space for that idea, but the alternative seems to be rejecting our fellow human beings’ moral and ethical identities. For Sarah, it was Tamara’s reflection on how she felt after her testimony that struck her as most profound in a debate about the value of life: “I actually felt like the majority of people on the committee did not respect what I had to go through. They thought that was wrong. They would have preferred that I was just able to get the D&C. Saying that—our side lost . . . and what I realized was that people like me and my case were a sacrifice they were willing to make.”10 By refusing to see the paradox of Tamara’s situation, they accepted that a choice had to be made, and making women’s lives harder—women like Tamara and Sarah—was a choice they were willing to make.
How different would abortion law look if we embraced the paradox of not knowing where life begins and valuing life at the same time? How different would the abortion debate look if we accepted that both “sides” touch on some fundamental truths? Paradox is disorienting at times. It is also empowering. It can be empowering to say “I don’t know.” It can be empowering to trust the testimonies and experiences of others. As people of faith, we should know that and live that experience.
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
We see the effect of and instead of or in so many aspects of our lives. After all, it would be silly to frame life in the dichotomous terms we frame politics. It’s not that we love our children or find that they drive us bananas sometimes. It’s that we love our children and they drive us bananas. It’s that we enjoy coffee and know that it makes us too jittery to sleep.
These everyday examples help us reach much harder conclusions: “I know you value a woman’s choices about her own body, and I think we need to talk about life’s sanctity.” “I know that trade agreements have harmed manufacturing employment in the United States, and we need to talk about how trade agreements can help promote peace among global powers.” “I know we see this issue differently, and our relationship is important to me.”
Our faith helps us understand the power of and too. Beth’s church recently hosted a living Last Supper. After his betrayal of Jesus, the actor portraying Judas left the stage. At the end of the performance, the actors playing Jesus and the disciples administered Communion to the congregation. The entire audience formed a line to receive the bread and cup. At the very end of the line, the actor portraying Judas stood, and he took the bread and the cup from Jesus in a powerful reminder of Christian grace. Judas both made a terrible mistake and remains beloved. Judas is both sinner and child of God, just as we are.
We can hold contradictory, messy, difficult things together. It just takes practice and faith.
1. How did you first engage with the debate surrounding abortion? How was the debate itself presented to you? Was it presented as simple or complex? One sided or multifaceted? Religious, philosophical, scientific, and/or legislative? How did this inform your opinion?
2. Think about someone whom you know to be a moral and ethical person who holds a political or religious opinion you find immoral. How do you feel when you think about this person?
3. What are some other areas of politics that contain paradoxes? Where are areas we refuse to let two things be true?