{"id":38354,"date":"2024-11-11T10:10:35","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T18:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=38354"},"modified":"2024-09-11T22:15:56","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T05:15:56","slug":"how-to-inspect-a-book-better-before-you-read-it-or-dont-judge-a-book-by-its-cover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/how-to-inspect-a-book-better-before-you-read-it-or-dont-judge-a-book-by-its-cover\/","title":{"rendered":"How to inspect a book better before you read it (or Don\u2019t Judge a Book by Its Cover)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was ready to be inspired when I started reading the book How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide.<\/em> After the first couple of chapters, it seemed like the book might be more about \u201chow to have any conversations\u201d than only the impossible ones because the principles and practices I started noticing in the book did not seem limited to hard conversations but could be applied to any verbal exchanges.<\/p>\n

Practices like seeing conversations as partnerships.<\/p>\n

And building rapport with the person you are talking to.<\/p>\n

And even how to end a conversation well (a skill that, after 35 years of ministry, I still haven\u2019t mastered and generally execute awkwardly).<\/p>\n

All excellent, practical advice. And I have a lot of hard, soft, and medium conversations that I\u2019m not always sure how to navigate. So, I flew through the first pages of this compellingly written book on the hunt for answers.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons it was compelling was that the book\u2019s authors, Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, approached the topic with a surprising and attractive level of humility: They admitted where they had gotten it wrong in conversations and pointed out what was necessary to correct what they\u2019d done.<\/p>\n

But as I continued to read, something felt \u201coff.\u201d I started realizing something I hadn\u2019t noticed at first. This was essentially a book that provided tools for people who wanted to change someone else\u2019s opinion, ideology, or beliefs. The book shared ideas about how to change the minds of ideologues, true believers, and fundamentalists (all of whom, according to their definitions, I could be identified as).<\/p>\n

How did I miss that for so long? I realized that I\u2019d done a poor job of inspecting the book beforehand. I could have picked up on clues if I stopped and looked through the table of contents thoughtfully.<\/p>\n

And had I engaged in a more thorough reading of the first chapter, I would have seen where the authors shared the book’s purpose when they said: \u201cUltimately, How to Have Impossible Conversations is about talking to people who hold different beliefs. What people believe matters…Beliefs can also change, and there are good and bad ways to change them. Conversation is a good way.\u201d<\/em> (4-5)<\/p>\n

And had I researched the co-authors before I started reading the book. I would have seen that each had written a book explicitly supporting their evangelical Atheism. Boghossian wrote A Manual for Creating Atheists, <\/em>and Lindsay wrote Everybody Is Wrong About God<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And, finally, I probably would have gotten a hint of what was coming from scanning the endorsements on the back cover and front pages: Richard Dawkins; Michael Shermer; Dave Rubin. All famously avowed and \u201cevangelistic\u201d Atheists.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not suggesting the book wasn\u2019t well worth reading. There was a much solid, practical instruction here. In fact, if you kept the content but switched the context to be written by a believer who was explaining how to talk to skeptics in a way that might help them consider the case for Jesus, I would probably have considered almost all of what was written great advice.<\/p>\n

To be clear, this is a book I look forward to reading more carefully and adding practical conversational tools that will help me talk to people who may disagree with me.<\/p>\n

However, I must admit that it was strange to read a book written as a kind of guide for winning apologetics conversations, but from the \u201cother side.\u201d I appreciate that they were at least open to the possibility (and encouraged their readers to be open) that while trying to change someone else\u2019s beliefs, your beliefs might change instead. That said, I didn\u2019t get the sense in reading this book that either of the author\u2019s own beliefs would be very open to being changed in conversation with someone else, especially if they came from a faith perspective.<\/p>\n

In the end, what I was really hoping for after reading the cover and the first chapters was a book not about winning arguments from either side but about truly having honest, relational, heartfelt conversations. I was interested in the idea of true conversational partnerships that didn\u2019t have any transactional motivation at all.<\/p>\n

Because at some point, while you may feel the need to change someone\u2019s mind on several issues, more often, we need to navigate conversations with those we disagree with in a gracious, kind, and patient way without thinking we can win the conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was ready to be inspired when I started reading the book How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide. After the first couple of chapters, it seemed like the book might be more about \u201chow to have any conversations\u201d than only the impossible ones because the principles and practices I started noticing in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3212,2489],"class_list":["post-38354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-boghossian","tag-dlgp02","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38354"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38356,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38354\/revisions\/38356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}