Sharp Disagreement

The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company;

-Acts 15: 39a

Paul and Barnabas were a great team. They had been through a lot together, they had been on trial and in jail, they had been beaten up and run out of town together, and they had seen hundreds of people open their eyes to the Good News of the Gospel.  But they couldn't agree on whether or not to take John called Mark with them.  Paul didn't want to because John/Mark had bailed on them at a crucial moment.  Barnabas wanted to give the guy a second chance.  It became such a sore subject that they could not agree and decided to go separate ways.  They didn't hate each other, they weren't all of the sudden mortal enemies, they just couldn't agree.

It's not a bad model, but honestly, it's not always an option.  When the Reformation was happening in the Christian Church, one of the strongest arguments made by the Roman Catholic Church was that, once they allowed one division there would surely be more and more and more.  They were annoyingly correct about that.  We can always find sharp disagreements, some sharp enough that we have to go our separate ways.  It is possible, but not probable, that this can be done without hate and rancor, but most likely there is always a need by someone to declare their opposition to be evil.

In an editorial in the NY Times today Bret Stephens writes an open letter to Dennis Prager the aim of which is to decry the current hostility for the news media.  Mr. Stephens seems a bit wrapped up in his desire to show that he took some philosophy courses in college, but he wraps up the article with the following: 

It used to be that conservatives thought liberals were wrong, while liberals thought conservatives were evil. Among the other ways that Trump has degraded the conservative movement is that he has turned us into a mirror image of what we used to accuse liberals of being.  He's turned us into haters.

It is actually fairly hopeful to me that Mr. Stephens is not the only conservative voice I have read that recognizes that something is amiss in our public discourse.  I admit, I sometimes get far too wrapped up in my own desire to be right.  I have felt a certain sense of schadenfreude as Trump turns out to be every bit as much of a bumbling blowhard as I expected.  Every time Mitch McConnell has to eat his BRCA hat, it makes me at least a little happy, but what would make me even happier would be if Congress, Democrat and Republican, would actually start acting like the grownups they claim to be.  I do not doubt that if egos and CYA politics could be put aside for a minute the crisis of healthcare (and it is a crisis, but not one created by Obama) in this country could be solved.
I believe, perhaps a little naively, that both sides of the aisle have some ideas that need to be reckoned with in any really big problem that faces us.  I only joke when I talk about moving to Canada, there aren't enough Presbyterian churches up there.  For better or worse we can't go our separate ways as a nation.  We tried that once, it didn't go well.
We have big problems that face us, and there are reasonable disagreements about those problems and their solutions, but we're not going to solve anything going the way we're going.  Just possibly, when credible journalists report something that reflects badly on the President or on some policy from healthcare to climate change to immigration, it's not because they're out to get someone, but because they are, you know, doing their job.
The presence of "fake news" in the form of propaganda and tabloid journalism may numb us to the constant stream of mendacity, but we cannot let it sour our ability to discern truth.  If we start our common cause on solid ground we will get a lot farther in the end.