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Rebecca McLaughlin: I don’t know about you. But when it comes to politics, there are certain issues that make me so angry that I have a really hard time talking to somebody else who disagrees with me. In particular, I have a hard time understanding why somebody else could see this issue very differently. And nonetheless, being intelligent, unkind person, perhaps even a brother or sister in Christ. And what I’ve learned is that before I’m actually ready to talk to anybody about these important, powerful issues, I need to get myself to the point where I actually understand how somebody else who might be very intelligent, he might be very well meaning and he might be a brother or sister in Christ could have come to precisely the opposite conclusion to me. And the best way that I can take myself to that place is by actually listening, sitting down with somebody asking curious questions, truly seeking to understand why they believe what they believe. Because until we have understood why somebody else believes what they believe, we are never going to be able to persuade them to change their minds. And if we’re not interested in changing people’s minds, but only in shouting about what we believe. There’s absolutely no point in us talking about politics at all.
