In a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times (March 12, 2010), David Brooks described the strikingly different portrayals of President Obama during his first year in office. Brooks pointed at the surprisingly entrenched partisan nature of national political discourse about Obama these days. The yearning for a post-partisan spirit in Washington as recent as the last election cycle of 2008 has led ironically in the opposite direction. One of the reasons for this Brooks supposed was that information distribution occurs in distinctive cocoons today. Partisans on the right listen only to partisan folk on the right and read only partisan blogs on the right. Partisans on the left listen only to partisan folk on the left and read only partisan blogs on the left. The analogy for our public religious discourse is straightforward. People with religious conviction tend to listen to and read others with similar religious convictions. We are not generally a people that deal with differences well, even if we seem to celebrate diversity a lot in our culture.

 

The ubiquity of information has not led to a wider and more generous public discourse but rather a more narrowly constrained partisan discussion.   Why is this? In part it is a natural response by humans that are not omniscient. As humans, we are not unlimited in our capacities for knowledge. We are made with limited resources and the result is that in the infinite information overload of the 21rst century, we inevitably filter out that which we cannot handle, which means paying attention primarily to those who already agree with us. This makes a huge difference in churches where our partisanship is both an enormous obstacle to the well being of the church, but also a safeguard against idolatry. Knowing the difference is a matter of practical wisdom and is critical for the church. We’ll look at the difference in my next blog.