Biola University
Can winsomeness be a path to persuasion in today's political climate? What is "informed winsomeness"? David French, political commentator and New York Times best-selling author joins Tim and Rick for a conversation on engaging others winsomely, the importance of humility when we liken ourselves to biblical figures, and the manner of response Christians should take toward incivility and political adversity, especially when facing opponents.
David French is an attorney, political commentator, and New York Times best-selling author. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he served as a lecturer at Cornell Law School and spent much of his career representing religious liberty cases as senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defending Freedom. He is the past president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute. French is currently the senior editor of The Dispatch and a columnist for Time, having previously served as a staff writer for National Review. His latest book (released September 2020) is Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.
Episode Transcript
David French:
Informed winsomeness is not naive. Informed winsomeness says that, "I fully recognize it. I can be as winsome as possible in presenting Gospel truth, and I'll still be hated. If I'm going to be hated, I want it to be because of the Gospel and not because of me."
Tim Muehlhoff:
Welcome to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. My name is Tim Muehlhoff. I'm a professor of communication at Biola University.
Rick Langer:
My name is Rick Langer, and I'm a professor at Biola as well in the Biblical studies of Theology Department. I'm also the Director of the Office of Faith and Learning here at Biola.
Tim Muehlhoff:
We're both the co-directors of the Winsome Conviction Project. Well, David, thank you so much for joining us.
David French:
Thanks for having me.
Tim Muehlhoff:
It's been great. You've been at Biola University doing several different events and sparking some great conversations. We thought here at the Winsome Conviction Podcast, we'd talk about the mess that it seems like we've gotten into in a country, in the book that's coming out soon called Winsome Conviction: Disagreeing Without Dividing the Church.
Tim Muehlhoff:
We talk about incivility and how Americans feel about it. There's a study that just came out that said that 98%, think about that. In a time when we can't agree on anything, 98% of us agree that incivility is threatening the very fabric of our nation. So our question to you, a person who's thought deeply about this is, how did we get here?
David French:
Boy, that's a long answer.
Tim Muehlhoff:
We're a short podcast.
David French:
I think what has happened is that we've gotten into a self-reinforcing cycle of anger and rage. So, trend after trend builds on each other and each new development amplifies the next development. So, let me put it this way. As I described in my book, we have sorted ourselves geographically into like-minded enclaves.
David French:
When like-minded people gather together, they tend to become more extreme. So, they gravitate towards the more extreme end of their political side. When people become more extreme, they begin to lose the ability to communicate well or easily with people on the other side of the political divide.
David French:
So you cluster around like-minded people, whether you know it or not, whether you realize it or not, you're becoming more entrenched in your political beliefs. Your political beliefs are moving more and stronger to one side of the political spectrum.
David French:
Then, you find that your ability to even engage on a lot of the most hot button issues with people on that other side diminish. All of these things, which are the product of big cultural, and social, and religious forces, big forces are then amplified by media.
David French:
Now, I am not somebody who says, "Oh, let's blame the media." Media has responsibility for its own actions, but we get the media we asked for. We tend to have this feel that the American people cannot fail, they can only be failed. Reality is the American people can fail.
David French:
Look, I used to have this frustration before I became part of the media. I would say, "Why is it that local news, when it bleeds, it leads. Why don't we have more news about good news? Why don't we have more news about things that are uplifting to the soul and to the spirit?" Then, I became a writer for National Review, and I saw-
Rick Langer:
Then, reality set in.
David French:
I saw, I peeked under the hood, and you look at traffic numbers. What do people read? It's actually a real chore to get people to read what they say they want, as opposed to what they say they don't want. In other words, they will read stories that are more inflammatory. They will read stories that are more celebrity focused.
David French:
So, one of the things that was interesting is I began to try to work in themes, the better themes into writing about these things. We, as a people can't sit there and point our finger at the media and say, "Why are you feeding me garbage?" Because the media will turn right back and say, "Because you eat it up." "Why are you feeding me junk food?" "Because you love it."
David French:
I think that, that's one of the problems that we've had is we've had this culture. We're getting increasingly separate from each other. We're getting increasingly extreme. We're getting increasingly unable to talk to each other across partisan boundaries, and we're consuming media that increasingly reinforces all of those biases.
Rick Langer:
Let me pick up on that and just ask what role does fear play in this whole process? It seems to me like a huge number of our ... Let me put it this way. A huge number of the instruments in our political orchestra are turned to the key of fear. We state things in a way that maximize fear. We repeat things that we find fearful. I sometimes have people send me conspiracy theory videos that are clearly designed to maximize the fear impact on the viewer.
Rick Langer:
Are we sucked into that the way our eyes are drawn to a car accident when we drive by on the freeway? Is there some other thing going on and why is that so important in politics?
David French:
I mean, fear has always sold as a motivator in politics. I mean, fear is a very good way of disguising your own problems. You may not like me. You may not like every aspect of my platform. You may not like everybody on our coalition, but we're not those guys.
David French:
So, fear can cover up a multitude of sins. Fear can cover up a multitude of imperfections. Fear can cover up a multitude of failures by saying, "As bad as things are now, it will be worse if the other side wins." So, it's a very powerful motivator that hits people at the center of their being.
David French:
Now, I think Christians should be the people most immune from that appeal. How many times in the Old Testament, the children of Israel are getting ready to go into the Promised Land, "Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid." Paul, "God did not give us a spirit of fear but of power, and love, and of sound mind."
David French:
The history of the church thriving even in the face of brutal persecution, just terrifying persecution. We, American Christians should be among the most immune to fear population in the United States. In many ways, the Christians that I know in other areas of their lives are just like that.
David French:
I have seen Christians respond with incredible courage to personal adversity, whether it's a health issue, or a loss of a business, or a career challenge, or a marital challenge, or challenges involving children and just responding with this enormous amount of courage and faith.
David French:
Then when politics gets involved, it's often as if all of that is forgotten. I got to stop socialism. Socialism is just around the corner. The church is going to face the end of its liberty, and you then see people who have withstood incredible challenges in their personal life respond in almost a panicked fashion to exaggerated fears of action by their political opponents.
Rick Langer:
One of the things I think about with that as well is what seem when we read fear not statements in the Old Testament, in the scripture in general, when we read the narrative of the old Testament, I think one of the things that we don't often call to mind the way we should is the fact the people in question for a fear not in any given time may have actually ended up having had a very bad experience.
Rick Langer:
So in the time of Jeremiah, we have this wonderful message about, "The wonderful plans I have for you, plans for welfare and not calamity, to give you a future and a hope," but the people to whom that phrase was addressed ended up exactly experiencing the mere thing they feared, which is namely going to exile in Babylon.
Rick Langer:
The thing that's hard for us is to stop and say, "You know Rick, the fear not, the it's going to be okayness is about the size and length of God's narrative and the work and project that he is doing, and it may not look that great in your individual moment." The problem is we want God to be writing a blog with a happy ending. As a matter of fact, he's writing a Russian novel and you're chapter 18. In chapter 18, it's not looking good.
David French:
No. In a way, Russian novel is not looking good in chapters one through 100.
Rick Langer:
That's right.
David French:
That's a really great point. Again, Romans 8:28, "All things work together for good for those who love the Lord and called according to his purpose." Wait a minute, hold on, record scratch, all things? That can't possibly be right. All things?
David French:
Also, the fear not language was often used in face of extraordinarily, not just when things didn't work out well over the short, to medium, to long earthly term, in front of truly calamitous. I mean, truly calamitous tragedies. I mean the sacking of a city, the forced to exile of an entire people. In Hebrews as it walks through some of the persecutions, people being sawed in two.
David French:
When that happens, it puts you in a sense of perspective. It grants you a sense of perspective. I mean, we don't even have to look back 2,000 years, or 2,500 years, or 2,700 years whenever the pre-Christian kingdom of Israel. We can look at things like Egyptian Coptic Christians being assassinated by ISIS. We can look at what's happened to Middle Eastern Christians and Christians at other parts of the world, just this ultimate challenge that they faced and some of them have faced brutal deaths. In that circumstance, we say, "God did not give us the spirit of fear in that circumstance."
David French:
Here we are in America, and I talked to a lot of Christians who they're actually afraid of what is going to happen in this country. I can understand concern. Absolutely, I can understand that this political party or that political party presents a problem that has to be addressed, but there's a difference between concern and fear. Those are different things.
Tim Muehlhoff:
So, let me channel some of our critics. So, we wrote a book called Winsome Persuasion: Christian Influence in a Post-Christian World and this is what our critics said to us. "You see, we're in a battle for our lives and Muehlhoff and Langer are saying we need to be winsome. That is the last thing we need to do because there is a gay agenda. There is a feminist agenda and our country is at risk."
Tim Muehlhoff:
"We're now going to hit them with winsomeness? That shows," I'm again, channeling our critics, "you don't understand where we are in the ball game. You think we're at the beginning. I'm telling you, the game's almost over and maybe we can rise up and turn back the tide of X, Y, or Z."
Tim Muehlhoff:
That's what our critics say to us, and I'm so appreciative of you David of getting our foot off the gas pedal of going off the cliff. You open yourself up for critique when you do that as well.
David French:
Oh my gosh, yes. So, here's what my response to that.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Write this down, Rick. Write this down, whatever he's going to say, we're going to use it.
David French:
So, what is it exactly that you're advocating then with the understanding that the biblically orthodox position on all of those issues that you care about is a decided minority view in the United States? You do not have the biggest army behind you. Let's put aside the principle. So the principle, because what they're making is a very pragmatic argument. They're making a pragmatic argument. Let's put aside the principle, we'll circle back to that.
David French:
Well, this is what puzzles me as they say, "It's essentially desperate times call for desperate measures." Okay. So, the strategy is to be a giant jerk online? The strategy is to be incredibly angry? What is that going to do when you're a distinct cultural minority? What is that going to do?
David French:
I come from a trial lawyer background. I was a trial lawyer. I was an appellate lawyer. I am very familiar with entering into an environment where I have to persuade somebody to my point of view. That is the whole goal. My client's interest and sometimes those interests work.
David French:
Number one, they were always vitally important to the client even if you're fighting over just money. This could be the client's business. It could be the client's livelihood, but when I was fighting over liberty, I'm fighting over core constitutional values, things that are of vital importance to the American body politic.
David French:
You know what I have? I have a task of persuading. I have a task of taking people who are not necessarily on my side, maybe they're completely unbiased, maybe they have a bias against me on the front end and I have a task of persuading them. The one thing I'm pretty darn sure about is that going in there with this aggressive rage is not persuasive. It's not persuasive.
David French:
One of my goals as a litigator being in front of the juries, talking to a judge, I wanted to be the most reasonable person in that room. I wanted to make it easy for them to rule for me. I wanted to make it easier for them to have maybe some decent, basic regard for my client and to the extent that that basic regard for me help them have basic regard for my client all the better.
David French:
So, I'm trying to humanize my client. I'm trying to express the cause because I'm asking them to rule for me, whether they agree with my religious position or not. I'm trying to humanize my client. I'm trying to appeal to common values. All of these things I think are absolutely critical if you're staking out a minority position against a majority worldview.
David French:
There's this really weird view I see online. In a way I get why they think it because really angry voices online can amass a pretty good following, but you're still a minority. You might be grabbing a lot of eyeballs on your side, but you're still going into the culture with an unpopular position, and you're arguing to a culture that does not agree with you largely that we have a place in this community.
David French:
We have a place in this culture and that our Liberty should be protected, not just by us but by you also, by those who disagree with us. So, that's a pragmatic. Honestly, I don't get the argument. We have to be clear being winsome is not being a doormat.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Right.
David French:
It's not being a doormat. It is defending life. It is defending religious liberty through a particular manner of presentation, through a particular attitude and morality of presentation. So, that's a pragmatic argument. What's your alternative to winsomeness?
David French:
Again, and also another thing is winsomeness is not a beg for love from the world. That's not what it is. Informed winsomeness is not naive. Informed winsomeness says that, "I fully recognize it. I can be as winsome as possible in presenting Gospel truth, and I'll still be hated. If I'm going to be hated, I want it to be because of the Gospel and not because of me." Does that make sense?
Tim Muehlhoff:
Absolutely.
Rick Langer:
Makes a lot of sense, yes.
David French:
So, that's the pragmatic element. The principle, the element of it is, the scripture does not say, "Love, mercy, and walk humbly with the Lord your God, unless the libs don't like you." It doesn't say, "Bless your enemies and doesn't mandate kindness unless it's not working politically anymore."
Tim Muehlhoff:
Okay. So, let me push back one little more instance. This is a cathartic moment for us. So, here's what critics part two will say, "Okay. I'm going to grant you the blessing for insult passages. I'm going to grant you the feed your enemy when they're hungry, but you're ignoring the prophetic side of scripture. You're ignoring the prophets who say, 'Thus sayeth the Lord,' and they didn't walk in winsomely nor did even Paul deal winsomely with the Judaizers," right?
David French:
Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff:
So, what would you say to those who are saying, "I'll grant you all that but there is prophetic speech that needs to come hard and fast, 'Thus sayeth the Lord,' and I'm sorry if your feelings are hurt by that."
David French:
Right. Well, there's a couple of things I respond to that and then they'll often add, "Jesus cleared out the temple."
Tim Muehlhoff:
He did.
Rick Langer:
That's a very handy off quoted passage, yes.
David French:
This is the understatement of the century. Jesus has some advantages over me.
Rick Langer:
I'm glad we got that cleared up. That's important. I'll make a note of that.
David French:
One of them is that he can see into the hearts of men, and I cannot. So when he says to the Pharisees you're like whitewashed tombs, which is pretty strong stern stuff, beautiful outside, full of dead men's bones on the inside. You know what he knows? That they're like whitewashed tombs.
David French:
When I look at a political opponent or I look at somebody who disagrees with my culture, their heart, the state and the condition of their heart is much more opaque to me. Now, I can say that this action in light of scripture is wrong. One of the things I have a much harder term time doing is discerning their motivation. I have a much harder time with that.
Rick Langer:
Let me just add on that point. One of the things that has struck me in watching conversations and participating in this, oftentimes we don't actually even want to look into their heart. We don't ask a question to invite them to open up but rather we just come back on the issue and then the obscurity of their heart isn't even an issue that I'm not like Jesus. It's simply that I haven't been interested. I haven't wanted to find it out.
David French:
Then, I'll even go further and I'll say that Isaiah and Paul have advantages over me. I mean, I have never had a vision from the Lord like Isaiah. So, what we're talking about is taking people who have had distinct encounters, very distinct world historical encounters with the living God and have therefore acted in accordance and acted under the specific mission granted to them and say that, is that an equivalent model for our behavior or it's more of the model for our behavior the things that they told us to do?
David French:
I have not had the Damascus road experience. In many ways I'm grateful for that because I also thank God I didn't participate in persecuting believers, which was preceded the Damascus road experience. I have not seen the glory of God in the way that caused Isaiah to say, "Woe is me. I am undone."
David French:
I think if we start to try to compare ourselves to Isaiah, to Jeremiah, to Paul, we need to be really humble about that. Do we have that level of discernment? Do we have that level of communication with the most holy God, do we? Are we more in the position of the people to whom Paul and Isaiah were speaking to, calling out our sin for example or describing a way in which we interact with the world.
David French:
I think that what you often see is you'll see Christians who will say, "Look at Isaiah," and they put themselves in Isaiah's shoes more than they put themselves in the shoes of Isaiah's audience, and I'm not sure that's the right placement.
Tim Muehlhoff:
I've only had one vision from the Lord. The Lord said, "It's time to shave your head. It's time. The fight is over. You fought the good fight, it's just-"
David French:
I had the same revelation.
Rick Langer:
I would like to go on record saying, "I have not had that revealed to me."
Tim Muehlhoff:
You got some great hair, Rick. Hey David, can I go back to one thing I thought was fascinating from a communication standpoint? It's when you have these isolated groups, when we insulate ourselves from the perspectives of others, it almost perpetuates a particular kind of response. We were talking before the podcast that we're fans of All Quiet on the Western Front, just the classic from Erich Maria Remarque.
Tim Muehlhoff:
I actually closed my master's thesis with this quote from the book because it was opening the gay Christian dialogue is what I focused on. This is what he says. Just to set it up real quick, this is trench warfare. The bombs are exploding everywhere, and a French soldier has gotten disoriented and jumped into the trench of a German soldier who just instinctively bayoneted him, didn't kill him instantly. Now he-
Rick Langer:
Oh, I remember the scene. Oh, it's awful.
Tim Muehlhoff:
... has to watch him die.
Rick Langer:
It's awful.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Then, afterwards goes through his personal possessions. This is how he described it. I thought this was really good about what you were saying about group think. "Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jump in here again, I would not do it if you would be sensible too. You were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response."
Tim Muehlhoff:
"It was that abstraction, I stabbed. Now for the first time, I see that you are a man like me. I thought of your hand grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle. Now I see your wife, your face, and our fellowship. Forgive me comrade. We always see it too late." Is that not powerful?
Rick Langer:
Wow.
David French:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tim Muehlhoff:
So, we're stuck in political trench warfare. It's the abstraction of you liberal, you conservative, because I don't know any liberals or conservatives because of the group. So now, I stab the abstraction and we dehumanize that person. So, what I love about what you talk about is we're going to have to re-humanize people.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Let me just talk about a podcast we just did, Rick, is where we check President Trump and Vice-President Biden. We just told humanizing stories about them because if it's a caricature, then you strip them of their humanity and you're just attacking caricature. So, we humanized both candidates. It was a very interesting process. So, comment on that quote and maybe how we're doing a version of it ourselves.
David French:
I mean that quote is incredibly powerful. It really encapsulates now. That's in the extreme circumstances of war, but it encapsulates the online discourse. I was talking to somebody the other day. If you follow me or God forbid read my replies on Twitter or have followed some of the controversies that have clung to me over these last few years, you'll see that I receive an enormous amount of just extreme amounts of hate and insults. I was talking to somebody about it the other day and they said, "You're not a person to them. You're an idea," and that's kind of scary.
David French:
That's true. So, what ends up happening is often on social media because on social media, your thoughts are accompanied by your picture. Here's you and your thought. So, the human you becomes a stand in for the thought. There's no separation between the you and the thought. So therefore, the you must be destroyed. The you must be humiliated. The you must be annihilated. We see this time, and time, and time again.
David French:
Someone asked me, "What's the difference between being a litigator and being a journalist?" I said, "Well, when I was litigating, I would engage in years of conflict with the attorney on the other side, sometimes advocating a position that I fundamentally disagreed with, and I thought was bad for America."
David French:
"You know what? It never crossed my mind once was to, while I'm litigating against him try to destroy his job, try to destroy his public reputation, to try to insult and humiliate him to such an extent that the interaction and the litigation was such a misery that it destabilized him mentally and emotionally, never crossed my mind. I never had an opposing counsel even in the most intense case possible, whoever did try to do that to me."
David French:
In the most intense cases, sometimes where they're acting like jerks in the litigation, they never went that far. The instant I entered into the world of commentary and opinion, was the instant I realized that people are not litigating my idea. They're often litigating my very existence in this career and the very possibility that I could enjoy a good reputation in this business.
Rick Langer:
Wow.
David French:
That's the difference. That's how toxic it is.
Rick Langer:
So, you're telling us that the pleasant civil human environment is modern litigation and the toxic dehumanizing environment is the social media we love to immerse ourselves in?
David French:
Yes.
Rick Langer:
Okay, just want to make sure we have that cleared up.
David French:
I'll just say this. Four-year-long commercial litigation battle is practically a Bible study compared to Twitter.
Tim Muehlhoff:
So, let's talk about this. I've made the comment that I think most Christians should get off Twitter and get off Facebook until they can claim what Peter says, "Share your opinion with gentleness and reverence." If you're not ready at a heart level to do that or the medium doesn't let you do that, then perhaps we need to abdicate that space until our heart, as virtuous Christian communicators is in the right place, and we're not going to just jump back into the fray.
David French:
Let me put it this way. If you can't engage on social media without losing your cool and devolving into personal insults and devolving into viciousness, you need to flee from it like Joseph fled from adultery. It is wrecking your soul. It is wrecking it.
David French:
You're wrecking other people while we do it. That's the thing is that you may say, "Ah, man, I really shouldn't have vented like that. I really shouldn't have said that." Maybe you don't want to apologize because that would be a sign of weakness and nobody wants to show any weakness, but you may have wrecked another human being.
David French:
Scripture says, "A bruised reed, he shall not break. A smoldering wick, he shall not put out." What we are right now is a nation of bruised reeds breaking each other every day. You have no idea what that person or you often have no idea what the person you just lit up on social media is enduring in their lives and their capacity to handle it.
David French:
One of the things that I've found, which is really interesting and sad is many times a person's emotional fragility is inversely related to their online toughness.
Rick Langer:
Wow.
David French:
The greater the toughness they're projecting, the less toughness they actually possess in their mind, and their emotion, and their soul.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Because I could see somebody saying, "Well, that's not my problem." "Hey, I'm sorry. You're the one who came at me. I'm coming right back at you." As Christian communicators, we're to care about that. We know in the Book of Proverbs that a word spoken in a certain way can break a bone. So, we're to care about them regardless. That's what Peter says, "While being insulted, I want you to give a blessing instead."
Rick Langer:
Tim and I often talk about James 3:17 and 18. It's just a passage we use when we're talking about the way we discuss things. It talks about the wisdom from above that is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, sincere and pure. This is the vision of it.
Rick Langer:
The interesting thing about that introduction, it isn't for all of the talk that James gives about speech, this passage is actually introduced with a comment about wisdom. I think this goes back to what you were talking about before, David, about the practical argument and then the imperative argument of the scripture.
Rick Langer:
The interesting thing here is that you're saying, "Oh, my imperative, to be pure, and peaceable, and gentle, and open to reason," apparently is also a strategic move in terms of its being wise. It is an example of the wisdom from above.
David French:
Right.
Rick Langer:
I think sometimes, we think the only power that's operative through the things we do is whatever we can marshal. I think biblically the notion here is that, no, there's things that you do that may seem like a sacrifice but the end of that sacrifice is this incredible power of transmission mediated not by your power, but rather by the intervention of the Holy Spirit or God's work in our midst.
David French:
Yes, absolutely. Also, going back to this social media point. Let me use the Spider-Man principle, with great power comes great responsibility. It also applies even when you don't have great power. With increasing power, comes increasing responsibility.
David French:
One of the things that I learned just even myself is that, so I don't have a huge Twitter following like 230,000 people or something like that. What I found is even when I direct my attention to somebody negatively, if I direct my attention to somebody negatively, they will suffer a consequence that I do not intend because when I direct them, I'm also directing this collection of people. Many of them are great. Many of them are awesome. Some of them are not and there are consequences that flow from that.
David French:
So, it's one of the reasons why especially on Twitter, although I don't always ... Every now and then you read something, you're just like, "Ah," and you're going to respond. I'm trying to be very cautious on Twitter and to the extent to which I direct critique at a person as opposed to at an idea, or the extent to which I'm going to direct people where I'm going to try to fight back against people who are attacking me personally because that unleashes forces that I'm not in control of.
Rick Langer:
Yeah. You're leading up a parade and you have no visual cue of who your followers are.
David French:
Yeah, right. Exactly.
Rick Langer:
They just come in behind you.
David French:
There's an exception to that. If people come after my wife or my family, well, my obligation is I have a turn the other cheek obligation. I do not have an obligation that is turn my wife's cheek.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Right.
David French:
So when people are cruel and vicious, or libel, or slander my wife as they have online or go after my children as they have, and my response is very different to that than it is if they're attacking me.
Tim Muehlhoff:
David, thank you so much for being with us. These are great thoughts. I think they're like way too convicting. So, we probably should have cut this off at the five-minute mark. Thank you so much for convicting us. We love what you do. Check out David's new book Divided We Fall.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Check out the Winsome Conviction website. Just go to winsomeconviction.com. You can hear about our podcasts. You can see resources. We have some great books available that carry on this discussion. David, thank you so much for being with us.
David French:
Thanks so much for having me.
