Not From Around Here

There are many things that divide people these days. Is there hope for any kind of unity will talk about it today on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman.

We have this profound opportunity to be the models of learning across regional differences economic difference difference say there's a good chance I'm only seeing part of the truth of things.

Could you help me see more than what I'm welcome.

Have an author of the New York bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" today. A man torn between raised in the rural South. Educated in the supper and now living in New York City shares what is learned about life we live. Brandon O'Brien will join us then you hear about his odyssey small town to the larger tell the city. Gary will always identify with Brandon I came from a very small, stop, and the move to a city was jarring experience mirrors your own life electric Chris. We had one stop owner Grove, North Carolina 272 left on the Trailways bus and with the Chicago so you can imagine the shock that I experienced when I moved from small tile North Carolina to Chicago and am excited about our conversation and talk about the various aspects of this country and the division that is there that just seems to be everywhere you look. Our guest is going to help us. Brandon O'Brien is his name, director of content development and distribution for Redeemer city to city. He coordinates edits and shepherds writing projects with Dr. Timothy Keller and urban church planters around the world. You might remember we had Dr. Keller and his wife Kathy on with us just before Christmas. Dr. Brandon O'Brien has served in pastoral ministry worked in publishing is written a few books and taught for state and Christian colleges and universities is wife Amy and their two children live now in Manhattan New York and are featured resource is his latest, not from around here. What unites us, what divides us and how we can move forward. You find out more at 5lovelanguages.com rather welcome to Building Relationships. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here will tell us about the title. I'm intrigued with, not from around here heard that before come from in your life. Yeah, I think I've had the feeling now, having grown up in Bentonville, Arkansas moved to the Chicago suburbs and now living in Manhattan. I've had the feeling personally of being not from around here timer to Arkansas is one of the states that people feel free to make fun of.

So when we lived in the Chicago suburbs. I got comments about people surprised that I was wearing shoes and that I could read so well in the search setting on so that you may have experienced that tubing from North Carolina but the it was all good-natured but but it did reinforce this since that you know you're not from around here. We do things differently here and I think as a title of the book it it it touches on the sort of alienation that people feel when they move or when things change and because were living. I think in a generation. Pretty significant cultural change and division from people that I've talked to who have read the book that that really's strike something in them that they are beginning at some level, even to feel like even if they haven't moved that the culture has shifted enough that there are beginning to feel like they're not from around here, even if they live in their hometown think you're right. Now you're addressing that whole increasing division that we see in American culture today in the political division in particular and in the next nine months I guess we can see more more of that amount.

Your perspective on that part of the culture.

Yeah I I was surprised by and in retrospect maybe shouldn't of been, but was really surprised by how divisive so much public discourse became after the last residential election.

It hasn't cooled off at all. It's gotten worse and I suspect that this next cycle will be even more confrontational and aggressive and I think that the you have the divisions of the people feel some of them are real, but there's certainly going to be exploited.

I think in the next nine months to get voters to promote ad dollars you known to get subscribers or whatever to various campaigns. Personally, I think things are going to get ugly in 2020, and that a lot of this discussion may may be helpful for folks navigating that almost like we're looking for a fight. Today feels that way really does now I'm writing your book and sharing your own story as well as doing research in this whole area did you learn anything that really surprised you. It's a great question. I think the thing that surprised me the most is how little experience and data.

Most of us actually have about people or groups of people that we have strong opinions about which is to say that, you know, statistically speaking, most Americans live pretty close to where they grew up.

We talk a lot about the culture being itinerant and transient, but really, the vast majority of people stay put, the vast majority of, for example, white Americans have very few close friendships with people who are not also white and so we have strong racial division without actually a whole lot of experience across racial lines. We have a lot of geographical division without a whole lot of experience across geographic lines, and I think what I found is that we have these deep deeply held strong opinions about other people but we don't actually have the data or the experience. You know, for those opinions to be based in.

In fact, and so those opinions come to a secondhand or thirdhand through media through television through music through movies, popular culture, you know, and it's amazing that something as divisive as these opinions we have about people can be based on so little actual experience or actual information.

Let's talk about media and its role in explaining ways that Americans divided how much blame to replace the media yeah well it's really it's easy and tempting to elect the media for a lot of things. I think my childhood experience. We blame the media for a lot corrupting the youth in unity all kinds of things but in some ways it's reflective it create certain stories but also reflects opinions that we already have and so I think what happens in the media is that messages get simplified.

We look for explanations for things and then I think of the unit after the last election. A lot of especially progressive Democratic Americans Democrat Americans were trying to explain how did candidate Donald Trump become president Donald Trump like nobody saw that coming, right as there were these the search for explanations and so people seized on. It's the economy it's religious liberty it's nationalism. It's what I think they look for some explanation and then it may be partially true, but it becomes the explanation and then it becomes repeated over and over and over in the news and in 24 hour talk cycles on radio and television. Whatever else and so you get kind of partial explanations of things that become repeated so often that they become a stand-in for the whole explanation fits the narrative. That's right. If you have your idea about a you know this is what and you hear something is likable. There is in it we get more entrenched in that right right yeah and there's a lot of interesting research on in-house or biased confirmation that when we look when we listen to the news.

Most of us are not actually listening for new information that can help us get a better fuller picture were actually looking for commentary and explanation that reinforces what we already think yes. And so the two sides.

If you know it's not quite that simple.

But liberal and conservative sides telling very different stories about the same events and then constituents who are eager to hear their perspective reinforced listening to their respective spokespeople.

You don't get anywhere. That way, except deeper and more entrenched, and if you happen to flip to another station that's not your station so you don't listen very long to you flip that photo like this that's right what and you mentioned before, that is like were looking for a fight and I think you're right. We've we've become. We got to the point where we the other side doesn't disagree with us the other side is either idiotic because they believe something that no reasonable person could believe or their sinister and they're out to destroy everything that I value and hold dear and when note when that's the sort of starting point for engagement. The really can't be engagement you and I think that the heat will be turned up under that in this next election year for sure. One of the other things that I see going on in the culture is it doesn't matter where you where you fall on the political spectrum. I think a lot of people are pulling back. A lot of people are scared to say anything because there pounced on if they say I supporter I don't support or how can you that those types of things that they're just scared to even have conversations and I think that's a dangerous thing in this in the culture. I think you're absolutely right.

I've noticed this trend in print where people will write a thousand word essay on something and they spend half of it, prefacing all the things I'm not saying yes.

So don't.

Don't misunderstand me, and I'm not taking a line on this and I obviously I think that and I think half of print material now is caveats, which is really exhausting to read but you're right that in whether it's online or in in person you live actual conversations.

I think read a place where you were 100% by end of sort of assumed so if you give the given engine say you know that candidate that I disagree with makes a really great point about X whoever everyone listening sort of assumes that you buy everything else that person says right there's a sort of like all or nothing mentality that makes it really hard to measure or nuance, conversation, and so I have strong opinions in person, but I'm really hesitant about saying anything on social media. Other places because of exactly what you described that it's hard to say anything without marking off a firestorm when really your motive may be just engaging in a conversation revenue I mentioned earlier that you grew up in Bentonville, Arkansas and one of us know that there was a stage in that city's law that tells life in which it really the population almost doubled with people coming in from other states and all over. How did that root how did that affect the schools and churches in the community. Yeah, great question that I read just this week that Bill is now on someone's list of it's the seventh greatest place to live in America or something. Okay I liked it real well when I was there, but I would not have put it on that list and in the 90s. It was quiet. It was pretty homogenous so ethnically 90 something percent white. It was not entirely Christian.

You know we had churches all felt a sense of mission to evangelize and things but I think that that we did feel like we had as a community shared set of values that you could expect from everyone, whether they were church people are not church people. There was kind of a standard way that we did things and when I was in high school, especially at sort of picked up pace pretty pretty fast. We had a lot of people moving into town because of Walmart and because of other major national employers in the region, but people moving in from the coasts and from the Midwest and from all over. I was familiar with names like you know Ferguson you know those kinds of O'Brien than good sort of Scotch Irish names and then we were getting lots of Polish names and it's funny to me now that that was considered a pretty massive shift. But that's just kind of how homogenous our region. Was this one is lessons. I don't know if anybody taught me explicitly when you start reflecting on your own memories. You know, I became hesitant to blame people for things that I don't know what they did what they told me in versus what I heard but there is a strong sense that our our Christian duty was to resist the sort of secularizing creep that was going to come with all of these new people right and we knew that there would need to be a new mission strategy, our member church was in a building campaign and there was talk about designing the building with the sensibilities in mind of these new people who are coming in and had more cosmopolitan views, and other things on the one hand, we wanted to kind of accommodate. On the other hand, there is this risk that there is danger outside of our community and now that dangerous coming in and you how do we know to negotiate, navigate changing values. When these people are not from around here.

You can tell other accents and you can tell by their ways of doing things and that they expect restaurants to serve alcohol and that you know those kinds of things that our community had at least it felt, unanimously agreed on. Now this. Things are changing, and so the way I think about it is that you know I don't remember any overt unkindness towards new people or anything, but I'm sure there was but I remember it, but the sort of theme of that stage of my life I think was resistance that there's changes coming and our job is to resist it and that became a kind of model for discipleship right that the faithful Christian is one who resists secular humanism in school and the kind of loose cultural values that are promoted in television and media MTV was know the big bad guy. At the time and and so resistance was, the theme of that part of my life. Will you tell a story about the what you call the Hillhouse production is of your youth. Give us some insight into that yes so we called it that the hereafter house and that ended, I was pretty young, still when that ended, but to me it's it it's kind of an interesting case study because essentially what it is is instant in place of celebrating Halloween by dressing up you know and trick-or-treating we would host this event and they still go on. I think around the country. In some places where people come to the church and they get sort of a tour of the afterlife right so you got a section where you go through hell and it staged it was in the church basement that our church we had black lights and we had no packing peanuts that we'd spray-painted so that under the black lights. They look like Colson was really I thought is pretty cool actually I I'm hell was an exciting place for the kids and teenagers and see go through there and you you meets the people who end up in hell right the the partying teenagers and the unfaithful husbands and that there's a sort of types you know that the characters are there and then you go through heaven. You leave there and you go up to heaven, where you meet the cast of characters there.

What what strikes me is really interesting about it is on the one hand, it kinda shows you some of the politics of the time right like these are the big issues for us issue like so who who is in hell, it may be people who promoted certain vision of either politics or social change. Who is in heaven.

People who were victims of those changes in and it will wasn't overt, but looking back you can kind of see the fingerprints of culture and politics there.

I remember really wanting to be an actor in hell because it is really cool down there and not being allowed to be because I was too young and answer raises the question of light. Well how young is too young to be in hell than what is that mean theologically and you know so we sort of avoided that by just putting teenagers down there and know when younger than that culturally what I think is interesting about is it Rick, it showed that we knew there were people in our community that needed to be converted. They didn't share our Christian values right but it also sort of assumed that all it would take for those people to come around is to be reminded of the reality of the afterlife. They didn't really need to be convinced of it. They just needed to see it and kind of snap them out of their current way of life. And so it sort of assume the Christian worldview. Even at the same time that it assumes that there were a lot of people in our community who are not Christians. I think looking back is really fascinating example of of our complex relationship to the culture right, we knew we knew we needed to convert it on the same hand we knew it shared some of our values and so where does that leave us as a as a group that is trying to engage in our culture, and I think there's a really good. I hate to give up.

There's a spoiler that I don't want to give in the book.

I think it's worth reading that section but I played a very important role in heaven since I was not allowed to play in hell and I think readers will enjoy that. All right, I'm glad you got to heaven. To say I don't remember hereafter house in North Carolina. When I grew up to when maybe there were some of the churches had that, but I understand what you're saying. It was a way of trying to get people's attention.

There is an afterlife know well and let's talk about that another concept that you mentioned in the book and that is the single story concept what you mean by that. And can you give us some examples of what you might.

This goes back to do something that Chris mentioned before, the kind of the narrative that explains our experiences that we reinforce in the single story is the idea that there is sort of one narrative that explains or defines an entire group or one example that I mentioned as the book is the idea of people south of the border in Mexico are mainly poor there looking for work there. You know, fleeing something that they owe a way of life that they don't want.

So they want to come to you to our country and have a better life. While that's true of some people. If that becomes the one sort of single story that you know the reason you know South American immigrants want to come here is because all of South America is terrible and it's just a bunch of gang lords and its there's no great culture.

And there's no whatever the net becomes a sort of single story that defines that group. In that chapter where I talk about this.

I quote a an African novelist who a bar this term from the single-story term from and she was introduced to the single story, when she moved from Africa where she was a grip in a middle-class family think one parent was it a professor college professor and the other was a professional of another sort and so she had a comfortable middle-class life then moved to America for college and her college roommate was surprised that she knew how to use an oven, and that she knows that her favorite music was some Western boy band and not like tribal music or something and she realized that despite her really rich experience in Africa, America, American culture has this one story about Africa, which is that it's poor and and war-torn and it's riddled with disease and it was hard for her to break that single-story idea. I think we see that a plane out right in with the sort of urban rural divide in America, the sort of single story about rural America is that it is full of poor, racist, misogynistic people who are clinging to their unit of religion and guns as their way of life disappears right that's kind of the single-story in the media and I think the single-story of know where I live now the East Coast elites is that there there's have all this money and they're out of touch with the real life of ordinary people and their passing laws that affect everyone except for them when they have no business meddling in every else's affairs and that this becomes the sort of like single story that defines these regions and then is reinforced in the media and in even then things like movies and popular culture's not even like news media, but the single-story is really powerful and it it creates then the starting point of my engagement with someone will be that single-story, so the not your job to prove to me that you're not that thing that I assume you are and is really hard to dismantle that single-story that we have and there's not just one. I should said the single-story is little deceptive. There are lots of different kind of narratives about the rural poor or the urban poor or the urban elite, but I think each of us has a sort of dominant narrative about those different people or places and it shape so it shapes how we vote and it shapes your view on social issues and it shapes our sense of discipleship. How how my supposed to be a faithful Christian the world in light of these groups of people that are out there is a really powerful thing. But again, it's not often based on experience or data or or any of our information. It's it's based on just stories. They get told and retold in in different formats around us. Back in November there was a a Berkeley professor who tweeted I embrace the bashing of rural Americans. They as a group are bad people who have made bad life decisions and we should shame people who aren't pro-city that's part of whether that's you know we don't know the context of all that, but that's part of what you're talking about is that there are these ideas that people have on both sides right that's right that's it. That's a great example right that the lump everyone into the sort of we could call it stereotypes, but is counted deeper than that. Because it's it's a whole kind of story about how what people's motives are what their lifestyle is like what they want, how they plan to get it what it's gonna cost me you not. It's a deep kind of rich almost mythology that shapes how we engage with people. Now that's a good I'm glad you mentioned, that's a great example of think our listeners can identify with that. We just just call the name of a state, any state California welcomes the people's mind.

What is different. Different people, but they have they have an idea what is like in California unit or West Virginia or Arkansas. So it it it kinda permeates the culture. My question is this how how do we get over there. How do we do what we tend to train ourselves to not to put people in those kind of categories but to be looking for truth and and seeing people as individuals. Yeah, that's the question is, that's the important question. I think there are a few things that people can do one as it comes to media were all aware of media bias, but we tend to assume that the the other people's media is biased and mine is not. So if you're conservative you tend to assume that liberal media has a bias and if you're liberal, you tend to assume that conservative media has a bias, but all media has a bias and I think it would be helpful for us to recognize that whenever we hear anything through some outlet that that group has a slant and that they want you to view that news a certain way and that it it is, at best, partially accurate right so we would do well to try to listen to a range of voices or something makes a claim that you think that's outrageous. It may be outrageous as and you shouldn't believe it. So let's do a little digging and find out if it's actually true.

Lets you know just in terms of engaging media which we all do all the time. I think that what I'm most interested in.

In this book is helping us recognize that we also each of us as individuals have certain biases that have been shaped before we even realized it, and that there are deeply consequential. They shape how we understand our Christian faith and how it plays out in the world and what it means to be a faithful Christian and a good disciple and that one of the things that I'm touching on the book that shapes those things in us is where we where were from where we grew up.

The communities that form us really the only way to even see our own blind spots and biases is to interact with people in a meaningful way, who are different from us who grew up in different environments or who ours socioeconomically are ethnically different from us.

It the only way we can kind of see what we don't see is if those things are reflected in us by somebody else.

But that's exactly what were discouraged from doing, and a lot of our media right and in this kind of ideological age were discouraged from making friends with the enemy.

To put it counted directly, but our Christian faith.

The gospel tells us that I think of Peter's vision don't call unclean what God has called clean. You know, so it don't don't call an enemy someone that God has called a friend and so in the church we have this this profound calling and opportunity to be the models of learning across regional different socioeconomic difference ethnic difference of kind of humbly coming to one another and saying there's a good chance I'm only seeing part of reality part of the truth and not the whole thing could could you help me see more than what I'm seeing. That's a profoundly countercultural posture. Right now I don't know any other organization or institution that stands to gain from that.

Really, other than the Church of Christ right and so were in this unique position to listen to brothers and sisters who differ from us regionally, ethnically, socioeconomically number of other ways, and those differences are real and their significant but they're not like terminal that I get to kill us, but if we put if we if we can learn from one another.

They can actually strengthen us and strengthen the church and give us. I think a new relevance in the culture to model what it looks like to look for unity in the face of division you know a Chris mentioned earlier in the statement was very negative about rule America court is this perception originate and how to get away from that concept in terms of the church coming up. No pastors or someone Oman Oman being in a small town or rule town for a few years, but will stay here forever, you know, it's like to like this ministry doesn't kill very much. I won't get somewhere, make a greater impact you that my goodness yes so is this other couple of things there. One is the sort of perception of rural America and I think it's interesting in my research for this book, I discovered that it goes way, way back and it goes further than this, but already in the 19th century, sociologists and historians were talking about how you know urban populations were more intelligent and more advanced and there was a basically when you put people together in a group that everyone's IQ goes up, she knows, the image you get in that people who are living in rural America are like semi-feral things like their living like a people out in the wilderness and in America would be improved if she is ever removed into the unit into the cities and so that's been around a long time and I think that you know what you're getting at is that the church has internalized that message in significant ways. On the one hand, we kind of view rural America as the hold out for traditional values and simpler way of life in all of that which is very important for Christians on the other hand, we feel like it's like small churches in small towns within the country are a great place to send young pastors to make their mistakes so that they don't take those mistakes and bigger churches that matter. More right and nobody puts it exactly that way, but that's definitely an impression you get and I was encouraged to do that. I I was called to ministry in high school in my church licensed me to the gospel ministry when I was 17 and they immediately encouraged me to find pulpit supply opportunities in and country churches near us and to find while I was in college to find a small church that I could pastors so I can kind of get my ministry legs under me and they never said it in a way that explicitly denigrated those little churches, but the implication is that like what you don't want to make those mistakes in front of a big crowd. So go do it from a small crowd that really does devalue the spiritual lives and the spiritual contribution. I think of those small churches, especially his ministry and a lot of literature and you know there's his ministry's been perfect professionalized in the last generation or so in America that make smaller places the farm leagues you know for for people to to to get better but were recording now in holiday season.

The Hallmark Channel between Thanksgiving and Christmas markets 24 hour holiday movies like nonstop for a month you can watch all these feel-good holiday movies and was interesting about them as I would guess that half of them if not more, involve some urban person going to visit there rural family or little more on a tree farm exactly like the cranberry farm is failing. And so they've gotta go back with their business sense and help out with the finances than they get there and realize that they're the ones that need help because they've abandoned these are the most important things in life which is simplicity in relationships and they find true love with the farmhand or whatever you know and cite all of the movies or to do that and so on the one hand, we speak about rural places, as if there there backward and they're dangerous to freedom. You know, because they're homophobic and misogynistic and racist. All that but then on the other hand we talk about those very same places as if that's where you go to light. Reconnect with the things that matter the most. And so it's it's kind of confusing how we view, especially that region.

It's a good place to retreat enough to go for a break and get away from the real pressures of life or its overrun with no opioid addiction, which is that you know so we have this kind of conflicted understanding of of that region and I think that trickles into the church to where we we celebrate really kind of suburban ministries large ministries that are very professional and then that am at some level we know we owe a debt of gratitude to the smaller churches. The kind of preserve things that we moved away from and we admire the simplicity of them, but at the same time we think their little backward in there behind the times and and so the sort of cultural narratives that we have worked their way into our understanding of ministry in the church and it takes some real self reflection to sort those things out.

I'm listening to you talk about the urban in the rural and the enemies that are out there. You know one side looks at the other in the political stuff in the social upheaval in the Supreme Court you all is that it's going on and I'm wondering okay how I how I live. I don't even want to talk on Facebook about anything anything important, you know, in politics, or even in religion. You say one thing and religion you get 50 people you're bashing you over the head. How do I live in a unifying way without becoming milquetoast or how do I really make a difference in the relationships that I have you to guess what this program is all about is relationships.

How I make a difference even in my own family where people disagree with me about this and we can we reduce unified anything. I think there are two things that I talk about in the book that I think are great for practical ways forward and one of those things is you have to do you have to leave your room where you are right now you can do this is to pray for specifically those people and places that frustrate you the most.

And so, without very much reflection, I think we can all think of either that political group that region of the country that person on Facebook that always post things every time they do your lead pressure goes up, you know that there's that there's there's somebody out there or some group out there that just drives you crazy and I think the first thing that I would recommend is start praying for that person, place or group elsewhere in the book about a time when I was in elementary school that classmate of mine just bothering me and only remember the details, but I complained to my mom about it because I wanted her to feel sorry for me and she said let's pray for him, which is not what I wanted and so I did what we did and we started doing it regularly and I don't remember if the circumstances change, but I do remember distinctly that my attitude toward him changed gradually so that instead of being annoyed with them all the time I was compassionate or empathetic, just felt more invested in right as I think the first thing that we can all do that doesn't cost anything.

It doesn't require any sort of new engagement with culture or anything is just to start praying for the people or the things in our life that really cause us frustration and anxiety. My question is, when we pray for those I can hear some blisters. I pray for them afraid, Linda and I thought that is all that you have the imprecatory Psalms right burnout. He is there to do that you write. That's less helpful.

I think than the great Psalms that talk about praying for Zion right praying for the city of David, and praying that God would restore its walls and the God would would bring peace and prosperity. I find really interesting that in Jeremiah when the people are in exile in a city that they hate that represents all the evil in the world to them in Babylon through Jeremiah the prophet, God tells them. Pray for the peace and prosperity of the city because when you prosper you will prosper and so essentially what he saying is the way that you pray for this place that you love Zion pray in that way for this place, that you hate and so I would say how do you pray for these people that irritate you in the same. I would pray for them in the same way that you pray for your children or your grandchildren or your spouse or your friends. The God work in their lives that God would soften their hearts and soften your heart toward them that whatever if you don't know the details. It may be difficult but if you know the details of health or struggles that you pray for God's intervention in those things which is to say, pray for them like a brother or sister in Christ, even if they're not too and I think that that's where God can do something remarkable and it may not happen in their life. First, it may happen in your life, first as a person praying. Good start. What we do there. One things I hope to pull out in the book is that one of the death the hazards of the mistakes that we make in these divisive discussions is that we externalize the problem so the problem is always someone else. It's that other group that has a wrong view or its unit. This other place that has the wrong values are. It's this other person who's always picking a fight than the tone of our discourse publicly right now encourages that kind of externalizing that are my job is to point out all the problems with that other group and so one of the things that I think we can do moving forward is actively self reflecting on what is it that I'm bringing to these debates in this division that's contributing to more division and more disunity and more anger and more frustration and why am I doing that.

Is it fear is that lack of faith is.

It hurt. You know what is it and and I offer some suggestions in the book on on a method for this prayer of examination that I like to use the cut helps me look at my own reactions to other people like why did that conversation. Why get so angry and that interaction and then in bringing that interaction before the Lord and letting him show me what my motives were and not that person's contribution, but my contribution to that moment and I think as we begin to do that will recognize things in us that we didn't see which is not fun but it's you know really helpful, but it also can help us to be compassionate for other people because if we realize when I'm angry it's because I'm fearful then maybe when that other person is angry is because they are fearful and now I know what that's like.

I I can resonate with the sense of fear that is created in our disunity and that gives me something concrete that I can pay for that price does convolute the praying for them self reflection praying for ourselves and I think that those two movements are really important ways that we can begin to heal some of these divisions. The other thing I heard you say earlier, was to learn how to listen to individuals with whom we disagree and try to have a civil relationship. Even though we may disagree theologically or philosophically, but at least treating them what we believe to be true, but people or people made in God's image and therefore valuable. That's right. Yeah, giving them the common courtesy which is think less and less common enough just she's hearing them out and instead of accusing may be asking questions, say hey, I recognize we disagree about this.

Avoiding the impulse to say. Let me try to convert you to my side and say could you explain to me why it's important to you that this thing go the certain way and then actively listening with compassion to that answer I think is a really important move Gary this sounds a lot like what you have talked with parents about how to deal with the teenager that the that they can't stand anymore because of the music or the hair or whatever and and to really move into their world because you care about them. They're not to do that your teenager is not the enemy and and we can talk about the same thing go to the I think so. If X removing from monologue to dialogue in a monologue I'm doing all the talk and you sit there and listen to movie and no dialogue is I want to know what you think I will know what you think this trip to only you know what why is this important to you what you just said of Brandon, so you will Brandon this is been a fascinating conversation and I think this book is going to help people release reflect upon what's going on and I asked how my eyes an individual and the larger group is a church. How may we be a positive influence in the world today rather than just staying away, isolating, or coming at each other with swords and guns so thanks for your work. Keep up the good work and thanks for being with us today. Thank you so much as it is been a real pleasure. All the division the rancor of the political social differences we have.

I think Brandon O'Brien is writing in his heart come through in this book will help you navigate the next nine months and beyond its title, not from around unites us, what divides us and how we can move forward and find out more at five love languages.and in one week David and Wilson want you one secret change or make talk about that next great topic. Looking forward to hearing Miguel. Let me think I cannot be black and Janice Todd. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman's radio station with publishers ministry and I thank