End the Stalemate: Tim Muehlhoff & Sean McDowell
Civil conversations feel harder and harder to come by these days. Hosts Dave and Ann Wilson are joined by scholars, authors, and Christian apologists—Tim Muehlhoff and Sean McDowell—to discuss their new book, “End the Stalemate: Move Past Cancel Culture to Meaningful Conversations.” Listen in as they shed light on our current polarized culture, as well as offer practical help for having better conversations.
Show Notes
- Connect with Tim Muehlhoff and catch more of their thoughts on the Winsome Conviction Project.
- Find previous podcast episodes and articles with Tim here.
- Connect with Sean McDowell and catch more of their thoughts at seanmcdowell.org.
- Find more podcast episodes with Sean here.
- You find find their book, "End the Stalemate: Moving Past Cancel Culture to Meaningful Conversations," in our shop!
- FamilyLife has a free devotional for you from Amberly Neese: "Finding Common Ground." Sign up at familylife.com/findingcommonground
- Find resources from this podcast at shop.familylife.com.
- See resources from our past podcasts.
- Find more content and resources on the FamilyLife's app!
- Help others find FamilyLife. Leave a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
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About the Guest
Dr. Sean McDowell
Dr. Sean McDowell is an author, speaker, and Associate Professor at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, with a Ph.D. in apologetics and worldview studies. He has authored or edited numerous books, including Chasing Love: Sex, Love, and Relationships in A Confused Culture and So the Next Generation Will Know. Sean is a gifted communicator with a passion for equipping the church, especially young people, to make the case for the Christian faith. He regularly engages nonbelievers in thoughtful dialogue on social media and YouTube.
Tim Muehlhoff
Tim Muehlhoff (PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is a professor of communication at Biola University in La Mirada, California, where he teaches classes in family communication, interpersonal communication, persuasion, and gender. He is the author of I Beg to Differ and Marriage Forecasting, and the coauthor of The God Conversation, Authentic Communication, and Winsome Persuasion, which received a 2018 Christianity Today book award in apologetics/evangelism.
Episode Transcript
FamilyLife Today® with Dave and Ann Wilson – Web Version Transcript
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End the Stalemate
Guests:Tim Muehlhoff and Sean McDowell
From the series:End the Stalemate (Day 1 of 3)
Air date:November 4, 2024
Sean:What’s the goal in engaging in a conversation? I think, when it’s all said and done, there only should be one goal of what we communicate and how we communicate it; that is, “To speak the truth in love.” If that’s not our goal—to love people—then what’s the point?
Shelby: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com.
Dave: This is FamilyLife Today.
Dave:We’ve got two of my favorite thinkers in the studio.
Ann: Right! I know. Are you excited today?
Dave:Oh, I really am.
Ann: Me, too.
Dave: And I’m not kidding—I said this in the endorsement for their book—do you remember?
Ann: Yes.
Dave:We wrote this: “These are two of the best thinkers, in my opinion, in the world—not the country, not the state of Michigan, not Florida—the world on apologetics, and Christian thinking, and theology.” We’ve got Tim Muehlhoff and Sean McDowell. Welcome guys.
Tim: Thank you.
Sean: Thanks. This is a treat.
Tim: Wow! We need to be here more often.
Sean: Man, alive;—
Tim: That sounded great.
Sean: —quite the intro; appreciate that.
Dave:I didn’t even think what I was going to say; I just feel that way about you guys. You guys think so well-rounded about important, divisive topics of anybody I know in the country.
Ann: But it’s the way you communicate them; you don’t push people away. It reminds me of the winsomeness of Jesus, how He—
Dave:Oh, wait, wait, wait; you can’t be comparative to Jesus!
Ann: No, no; I—
Dave: You just raised the bar.
Tim: Dave, do not interrupt Ann!
Dave: Okay, sorry; sorry.
Tim: Go with it, Ann; go with the Spirit.
Ann: This is totally of God. It’s that He was winsome; everyone was drawn to Him. No matter where they stood politically, theologically, they were all drawn to Him.
Dave:They’re going to go home, and tell their wives, “Hey, we were compared to Jesus.”
Tim: I’m going to play this, opening every class, the start of every semester at Biola University.
Dave:Well, tell our listeners what you do. You both are profs at Biola in different areas, so tell us what you do.
Tim: I’m a professor of communication.
Dave:Did you have hair when you started, like me?
Tim: I did; yeah, I did.
Dave:You have a little.
Tim: One time, I was lecturing; and students started laughing in my class. They Googled me with hair, and I docked them all five points; because they shouldn’t be on social media. But five years—
Ann: Maybe, you’re not so winsome; I don’t know.
Tim: That’s right.
Five years ago, Biola started the Winsome Conviction Project; because all of us were concerned that we’re just losing the ability to talk to each other about really important topics. So we just got back from Capitol Hill, talking to self-professed Christian leaders in the Pentagon, Capitol Hill. We need it; I think the country feels it. I think families deeply feel: “We’re losing the ability to talk to each other.” And so that’s what we try to do with the Winsome Conviction Project.
I’ve been a long-admirer of Sean. We’ve literally known each other—I think we figured this out one time—how many years, Sean?
Sean:About 25 years.
Dave: Really?
Tim: About 25 years.
Sean:Yes, that’s right.
Tim: And of course, we all know his dad, Josh McDowell; we all grew up with Josh.
Dave:I picked Josh up at the airport, in 1978, at Ball State University.
Tim: Wow!
Sean: Wow; you remember the year and the place. That’s impressive.
Dave:Well, I was a college student; so obviously, I remember the year—and I had a really good football year that year, so I remember that year—it’s in the books. But anyway, he was fantastic.
Tim: I’m a huge fan of Sean.
Dave:I might’ve played him in racquetball.
Tim: I’ve played him in racquetball.
Sean:You did?
Ann: Is he a racquetball player?
Tim: I played your dad in racquetball when he came to Miami of Ohio University in Oxford, Ohio.
Ann: What year was that?
Tim: I can’t remember—I’m bad at years—you’re great Dave.
But Sean’s a professor; he has a YouTube channel that I love. It’s absolutely amazing.
Dave: I love it! He’s going to introduce you, Sean.
Tim: No, I’m just giving him the handoff. Sean’s amazing; the faculty at Biola are great. So Sean, what do you do?
Sean:When I was eight, somebody asked me, “How does your dad react to losing at handball?”
Dave:We played racquetball.
Sean:Oh, oh, it was racquetball—
Tim: We did; it was racquetball.
Sean: I’ll take that back; it was racquetball.
Dave:He would have in his [bag] when he traveled.
Tim: It was; it was.
Dave:I remember racquetball, and so I played him.
Sean:My response was, “I’ve never seen him lose.” Now, if you beat him, just don’t say anything; so I can keep that narrative going. That’s how I remember it.
Dave:I did not beat him.
Sean:I grew up—my dad/my parents were, and are, on Cru, so just a heart for evangelism—but my interest, which will make sense, is in apologetics. I also teach at Biola, Talbot School of Theology, an apologetics class on the problem of evil, defense of the resurrection; write books; speak, run a YouTube channel. And [I] try to model a lot of things we’re going to get into in the book—just having conversations with progressive Christians, agnostics, atheists, Muslims—and I enjoy sitting down, just trying to find common ground with people, getting clarity on what they believe, clarifying differences, and just hearing people out—showing, in our crazy culture today, you can actually have meaningful conversations, which I think is one way of loving people today; and so that’s why I try to do so.
Tim asked me about this book; and I was like, “Let’s go.” It was one of the easiest books I’ve written—it took a ton of time—it was just trying to express the things that you and I are trying to do in our life and ministry.
Dave:When we picked up your book, End the Stalemate, a thought came to my head; and it was a song.
Sean:Here we go!
Dave:Okay, I thought, “Tim’s old enough—
Ann: Did he do a song for either of you yet?
Sean: He did, last time I was here.
Dave: Oh, I did a song when you were here last time?
Sean: We talked about chasing love, and you did some love song.
Dave:Oh, yeah! It was/you had it in your book.
But Tim’s old enough to remember this song—he was a kid when this came out, like me—but Sean might be a little younger. The lyrics are sort of about that—[We Can Work It Out©; Artists and Writers: Paul McCarney and John Lennon; Produced by George Martin, December 3, 1965] —“Try to see it my way. Do I have to keep on talking ’til I can’t go on?” You know the song?
Tim: Yes! Yeah, yeah.
Dave: “While you see it your way, run the risk of knowing that our love may soon be gone. We can work it out. We can work it out.” Come on, Ann!
Dave and Ann: “Life is very short, and there’s no time for fussing and fighting, my friend.
I have always thought that it’s a cry; so I will ask you.” You remember that song?—We Can Work It Out.
What year? What year was it?
Dave: 1967 or ‘68.
Tim: Wow.
Dave: I was probably ten years old. I’m a Beatles nut with A Hard Day’s Night©, when I was eight years old, and fell in love.
But anyway, it’s a song that McCartney and Lennon wrote about ending the stalemate. And again, I’m just having fun—it’s a ridiculous song—but when I saw End the Stalemate, I thought, “They were trying to say”—and a lot of people aren’t like me, Beatle nuts; when you go to the backstories of their song, they’re like—“There’s all kinds of fighting and fussing; nobody can get along. I can only see my side; you can only see your side.”
Ann: “Try to see it my way.”
Dave:And they just wrote this simple little fun song, with an accordion, that became a number-one hit about that. When I read End the Stalemate, I thought, “That’s what you’re trying to do.”
But here’s what I want to start with—here’s the subtitle—Move Past Cancel Culture to Meaningful Conversations. Explain and talk about cancel culture.
Ann: And how appropriate for the timing, for you guys to be on; because we are in the week of election—the election—the Presidential election. And so there’s a lot of conversations that are going on that are really difficult.
Tim: Well, let me give you some bad news; and then, let me give you some good news. The bad news is there was a survey done by Pew Research, where 33 percent of respondents said, “I no longer talk to a family member, because of the 2016 Presidential election.”
Ann: —a family member!
Tim: —family member. They have stopped talking completely to this family member, based on that election; that’s the bad news.
Here’s the good news—and this is almost why we wrote the book—is 98 percent of Americans—think about that; and people say, “Americans don’t agree on anything.” Ninety-eight percent of us would say incivility is a threat to this country. So the majority of us really do believe we got to work it out—we have to find a way of pushing past our differences and talking to each other—and we feel that. So that’s why we sat down and wrote the book—is we’re speaking to the majority of Americans, who are like—”We can’t continue on this trajectory, because it is not good for our country. It’s not good for our families. So let’s find a way to end the stalemate and be productive.”
Sean:Cancel culture is a term that’s not only in the US. I was asked to speak on cancel culture, last year, in the Philippines.
Dave:Really.
Ann: Really?
Sean:It’s become a global phenomena. It was tied to political issues there: tied to issues of sexuality there; tied to other ethical issues. It’s basically: “If somebody holds a position that you deem—improper, or wrong, or mistaken; or says something you find offensive—then, use social media, primarily, to target and try to cancel that person’s livelihood or platform.” Other people just start piling on to cancel somebody.
The reality is it’s a phenomena that cuts across politics; it cuts across religion. And what happens is—as Christians, I think we make one of two mistakes—either we go:
“Well, you’re going to cancel us, I’m going to cancel you; because there still are a lot of people with power and influence, who are Christians.”
Or we act in fear; and we become afraid to say anything, because we will get canceled.
And that’s an understandable fear. There’s a lot of times, where I’m about to say something; I think, “Okay, how do I word this in a way to make sure I don’t lose my job?”—”somebody doesn’t come after me?” I try to be as gracious as possible. I think it’s impossible to avoid those voices, and we should have them to a degree, and be thoughtful about what we say. We’re at the point where censorship is coming in; name calling is coming in; and we’ve just lost the ability to communicate with each other.
Dave:So where do we go? Because Sean, I’ve literally done that. I’ve gone quiet/silent in some ways, especially socially social media. Last night, I saw a post of somebody I know. All the comments started going, and I had all kinds of thoughts; and I’m like, “Nope; I want to have a meaningful conversation, even online, with people I don’t even know.”
Ann: Well, “Is it productive?”
Dave:The fear was like, “Is it worth it? I’m going to be misunderstood; then, it’s going to go to another. I’m just going to stay out.” I find myself doing that more than engaging; because I don’t think it’s worth it, because I know we’re going to be divided.
Ann: And that’s my question, too: “Is it productive?” I mean, are we getting on there to change somebody’s mind? Because it seems like we’re using platforms to change somebody. “Does that change somebody?”
Sean:Part of the question is: “What’s the goal in engaging in a conversation?” Is it to get retweets?—then, you try to be provocative; you rile up your group; you defend yourself. That’s how you sell books; that’s how you get followers; that’s how you get subscribers. “Is the goal to win an argument?” I think, when it’s all said and done, there only should be one goal of what we communicate and how we communicate it; that is, “To speak the truth in love.” If that’s not our goal—to love people—then, what’s the point? I think we forget that.
Now, love doesn’t mean you don’t speak truth; you need to speak truth. It’s truth that sets people free. But do we communicate it in a way that’s effective and helpful? I think there’s wisdom, like you said, in holding back. I see stuff—and I want to weigh in—I want to comment. Can’t tell you how many times I go, “Oh, I didn’t know that; I didn’t have that angle. I’m sure glad I waited and was patient before I commented or I would’ve gotten piled on”; and maybe, rightly so, in a few circumstances. So there’s wisdom in holding back; but there’s also a sense of: “Am I holding back so much that I’m not speaking?”
Dave: Right
Sean: Yeah, it should be motivated by love. If that’s not our goal, what’s the point?
Tim: And I would just add to that: the book, I think, will work for politics; I think it really will. “Will it work on Capitol Hill?”—t wasn’t necessarily written for that; it really is written for the dinner table.
Ann, what you just said, I think there’s wisdom in keeping silent—maybe, on social media about different issues—but when it’s your family, there’s only so many times you can just stay silent. We know latent conflict is the conflict that’s underneath the surface. So every time you bring something up in the marriage—and I just go, “Nope, I’m not going to say anything, because we’re just going to get into an argument,”—you can only play that card so many times within a marriage or a family, where now, there’s so much under the carpet, it’s affecting every conversation.
The book isn’t trying to fix America, at large; it really is meant to be taken with family members, roommates, coworkers, the places we live. We do need to, eventually, talk about these topics. And this is helping people:
“Prepare to have the conversation,”—which is a big part of the book—“Don’t just launch into conversations.”
And then, “What do you do during it?”
And “What do you do after the conversation?”
[This] is kind of how we package the book.
Ann: Well, you guys have teens and young adults; and you’re teaching young adults, all the time. So guide us—teach us, as moms and dads—“How do we have those conversations if we’re on totally different playing fields at the dinner table?” or “On Sunday, if your kids happen to come over, should we not go there?” It’s sounding like you’re saying, “Sometimes, you should.”
Sean:I think step number one is “Having a relationship.” A lot of the conversations; for example, that I’ll have at churches, or on YouTube—work well, in part, because there’s a relationship with a person and there’s trust. If that’s not there, it doesn’t matter when or how you have the conversation. That’s true with an atheist; that’s true with your kids; that’s true with a coworker. I mean, the Bible talks about love covers a multitude of sins, right? If there’s love there, then, “I’m going to let that comment go,”—not to bury it; like you say, “We don’t want to bury stuff,”—but “because I love you, and I know what you meant.”
So step number one is just: “Build that relationship.” If you want to talk to the kids about anything that matters—spend time, going to their baseball games; spend time, talking with them; spend time, swimming with them; spend time, playing video games with them—relationship, relationship, relationship.
Second is: “It’s got to be the right time, and it’s got to be in the right way.” Sometimes, kids come home from school; and parents are like, “Hey, how was your day?”—and it’s just not the right time for a kid to talk. I think, if we would think through—“Build a relationship and the right time,”—the vast majority of people, hence, your statistic earlier, Tim—want to have a meaningful conversation about issues that matter if we’ll, at least, get those two things right for starters.
Tim: And Sean’s, literally, working through the book of Proverbs, right? I mean, a wise man overlooks an insult—“I’m not going to bury it forever; but okay, you just said that;”—[sound of pushing a button]—“that just pushed the button/that really pushed the button; but now is not the time; now is not the place.”
And then, there’s another Proverb that says: “A word spoken in the right circumstance is compared to fine jewelry.” I would add just one thing to what Sean’s saying. I love the thing about building relationships—that’s so huge—but when we’re going to talk about the hot-button issues; and every marriage and family, you create this list pretty quick: “We got to be careful going there.”
One of my kids, we disagree about politics—we just do—he’s brilliant. So here’s the funny thing about writing a book like this, okay? We’re, literally, writing End the Stalemate; we’re in the process of writing it. My child, on the phone, mentions a study/a political study he loves it; I do not agree. So I had that moment—I, literally, had that moment—that probably every listener has; which is, “I don’t think this is…I’m doing it.”
Ann: Wait; take us back to the conversation. How did it start?
Tim: Okay, he brought it up.
Ann: Yeah,
Tim: It was a little bit: poking the bear; he knew it. I love him to death; deeply respect him—very smart child—and he poked the bear. I just sat there, writing this book, going, “I’m not ready for this. My heart is not ready to have this conversation.” Then, me being me, I launched right into it. You know it’s going bad—when your wife walks outside, looks at you, and goes, “Shh!”—because my heart wasn’t in the right place.
In the book, we take a ton of time to say, “Before you have this conversation, you got to deal with your heart.” The heart is mentioned 500 times in the Bible. Jesus says it is from your heart that you speak. So we really are big advocates of: you need to sit with these topics, and say, “Lord, what is happening in my heart when this topic comes up? There’s no sense of humor anymore on my part; my humor has evaporated. I get really defensive when this topic comes up.”
Ann: Why does this make me so happy? It makes me—
Dave: I don’t know, and why are you looking at me?
Ann: No, because I can relate to this.
Tim: Right!
Ann: Okay; well, finish off: “What happened?”
Tim: Okay. Oh, well, it did not go well.
Ann: —because—
Dave:Surprise; surprise.
Tim: Surprise; surprise. I raised my voice. We were cutting each other off—he’s a lawyer; I was on the debate team—there’s a recipe for disaster. So we hung up: “Love you,” “Love you; bye”; boom!
And then, when the Holy Spirit shows up, it’s just such a bummer; it’s like, “Remind Me what you do for a living,” “I’m a Christian professor,” “Right! And what book are you writing right now?” “End the Stalemate,” “Was that good? Did you do anything you…”
I had to wait—I had to cool down—and then, I called him back, and said, “Hey, my bad; that was not good.” And he said, “Yeah, I agree.” We set up a time; and then, we tried to have the conversation. It was like a week later or something like that. I needed to prepare emotionally, spiritually; I needed to ask a fundamental question: “Am I open to his perspective?” I wasn’t—when that thing happened, I wasn’t open—I wanted to set him straight. So now, I need to go back to the Lord, and say, “Okay, make me open to his perspective.” That’s a process; it took me a while to get there.
Ann: Do we need to be open to their perspective?
Tim: I think if this is your child—again, this is situation-specific—
Ann: Right; okay.
Tim: —I’m saying Marital Communication 101; Parenting 101—I think it’s going to go along: “This is the Rule of Reciprocation,”—you generally treat me the way I treat you. If I’m not open to [his] perspective, then how can I ask my child to be open to my perspective? That’s spiritual preparation to do that: I need to be ready to listen and not get defensive. We talk about “breath prayer” as the conversation is happening; I’m, literally, praying as conversation [takes place], “Lord, okay; that was hard to hear. I really don’t agree with that, but make me open. Let me listen, knowing I’m going to get to the point where I can share my perspective.”
Dave:Yeah; you’re talking about, now, the pre-conversation preparation; because part of me thinks pre-conversation is: “I’m getting all my points ready. I’m going to nail you, and here’s my five points,” and “I know what you’re thinking.” That’s part of it—you got to know what you believe in, what they believe in, how you have a conversation—but you’re talking much deeper. You’re talking heart—right?—when you talk pre-conversation.
Sean:Well, spontaneous conversation is the one you [Tim] described. They come out of, seemingly, out of nowhere; and there’s no preparation. You’re not expecting it; and that’s, often, when we say things we want to take back, in the moment, which is a reminder for us—on the flip side—if you were triggered by this, understandably so: “Are we dropping little rhetorical bombs for other people to trigger them at certain times? What are we expecting?” Well, then, that’s on us for doing that, even if the person responds in a way that they shouldn’t.
Ann: Give us an example of a rhetorical bomb.
Sean:A rhetorical bomb that could just be over the dinner table—dropping something about an election, right?—”This person won,” or “Are you sad this person lost?”—and it’s like: “Well, what do you think I’m feeling right now?!”—that kind of reaction. It could be on any issue; it could be on a sports team, whatever. So those are just little statements, where if we’re really analyzing our hearts, we know—to use Tim’s term—we’re kind of “poking the bear.”
I can think back of times that I’ve done that to other people, and I don’t love that I’ve treated them that way. I remember a comment, probably 15 years ago, my neighbor had a big bumper sticker of a politician that I was not in favor of. I just made a comment like, “Hey, what do you think about that election?”—because his politician lost. And later, I’m like, “What a low lame thing to say,” especially because he wasn’t a Christian. I partly/probably 80 percent of it was in fun, but that 20 percent was not! So those are the kind of things we need to not say.
It’s hard to prep for a conversation like that when it comes up; and in the moment, there’s everything within you. So before we come back to the pre-conversation, I just want to say that—and I’ve told you this, Tim—that I don’t think anyone has shaped the way I communicate more, or try to communicate more than Tim. He’s a communication professor.
But [his] story illustrates: “You do this for a living; you research this; you practice this, and still have moments that you regret. If that’s going to happen to you, it’s going to happen to all of us.” If you want to get better at communicating, it’s going to be one step forward; maybe, two or three steps back, especially in our divided culture. I think the vast majority of people—if there’s a relationship there, and we just own it—we’ll be quick to forgive, and you just grow out of it.
Tim: So pass! Pass; right? Every holiday that comes, all of us, in all of our platforms, we do the holiday conversation episode: “What’s going to happen at Thanksgiving?” “What’s going to happen at Christmas?” My point would be learn how to pass when something comes up: “I’m not going to bite.”
Ann: So your son calls; he brings up—
Tim: Okay; I would say, if I’m in a good place spiritually, I would say, “Okay, what did the study say?” And then, as I’m listening to the study—that honestly, I’m going, “No, no, no’ nope,”—but I’m not going to vocalize that; because the first step, in any conversation, is I want to do what is called “perspective taking”: “I want to see the world through your perspective.”
So here’s a study that my child thinks is a really good study: “Okay, why do you think it’s a really good study?” “What in that study really speaks to you?” “Why do you trust this study?” Now again, tone is everything; we all know this. Because if I go [demanding], “Well, why do you trust this study?” “What is it about this study?”—that tone just sabotaged the whole conversation.
Ann: So you wouldn’t necessarily pass on that conversation with your son.
Tim: I might say, “Yeah, tell me about the study. Hey, you know what?—shoot me the link. I’d love to read that study; and then, let’s talk about it.” Now, when we’re going to talk about it, I need to have prepared. So we need to practice doing something called “perspective taking.”
The cool thing we did with the book is we hired a really talented web designer to create a website; it’s called EndTheStalemate.com—totally free—you don’t need to have read the book. We’re going to present to you perspectives, that we know one of them you’re not going to agree with; you’re just going to listen to it. And you’re going to go, “I do not agree with this person.” But we’re going to ask you to not have a knee-jerk reaction; but to stop, and say: “Okay, Lord, let me, at least, be open to the perspective. Let me flow what they’re saying so, at least, I understand it. Then, let me try to find common ground; and then, I can disagree.”
Let’s work through that progression and get used to doing that. Because of the political season, if you go to it right now, there’s going to be two really articulate Christians. One’s going to argue a particular way; the other’s going to argue in a different way. We just want you to sit with it and prepare your heart to hear from both of them. Now, if you’re like—“I don’t want to hear that person; I’m not going to listen to that person,”—“Well, okay, I need to sit before the Lord, and to say, ‘Am I, at least, open to hearing what they have to say, with a charitable spirit?’” The great thing about this website is it’s in the privacy of your own home. You can scream at the screen, “This is stupid!” and you didn’t hurt a relationship. I, literally, think we need to practice; so just go to EndTheStalemate.com. Let’s start practicing listening to perspectives we don’t agree with, but not having knee-jerk bad reactions.
Dave:Well, here’s an amazing thing: we barely started, and we’re done. We’re out of time; I mean, it’s crazy to think. I mean, there’s so much more I want to talk about, which we’re going to talk about tomorrow. But here’s where I want to go tomorrow. One of the thoughts is, okay, I’m listening. I’ve prepared my heart. I’m literally breath praying as I’m listening to your point. And I believe your point is lies; it’s not true—it’s not just, “Okay, a different perspective,”—it is wrong. I believe that and know—
Ann: —“Biblically, it’s totally against the Bible.”
Dave:“How do I respond?” I’m not just going to go, “Okay, great; you’re wrong!”
Tim: I’m so glad we’re out of time! We can’t come back tomorrow; we’re sorry.
Dave: Okay, you’re coming back tomorrow.
Tim: Great question, Dave.
Shelby: I’m Shelby Abbott; and you’ve been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson, with Tim Muehlhoff and Sean McDowell, on FamilyLife Today. Tim and Sean have written a book called End the Stalemate: Move Past Cancel Culture to Meaningful Conversations. This book is really for anyone who feels kind of just disheartened by the current state of the conversation that’s happening in culture right now and wants to learn how to foster just more meaningful, respectful conversations in a culture of division. If that’s interesting to you, or you feel like you could really benefit from that, you can get your copy of Tim and Sean’s book, End the Stalemate, right now, by going online to FamilyLifeToday.com. Or you could click on the link in the show notes, or feel free to give us a call at 800-358-6329 to request your copy. Again, that number is 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word, TODAY.
So we’ve talked about this a lot, obviously, today. We’re living in a time right now of just great tension and division. We’re experiencing that, not only amongst people who are surrounding us in our neighborhoods, but also in our families, and even on social media. But Psalm 1:33 tells us it’s good for believers to live in unity with one another. “How do we do that when everybody feels like they’re angry all the time?” Well, I’m excited to invite you to join us, here, at FamilyLife for a five-week video series from our friend—author and comedian—Amberly Neese. It’s called “Moving Toward Each Other in the Middle of a Divisive World.” It’s really about building peace amongst the people who are around us instead of creating division. You can sign up for this five-week video series by going online to FamilyLife.com/FindingCommonGround, or just finding it in the show notes today. Again, that’s FamilyLife.com/FindingCommonGround.
Now, coming up tomorrow, Tim Muehlhoff and Sean McDowell are going to be here to help us transform kind of our heated debates into more meaningful dialogues with people. That’s tomorrow; we hope you’ll join us. On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I’m Shelby Abbott. We’ll see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.
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