Today I’m going to take the day off from posting about faith or science and talk about how we should argue about these topics online.

The ways we think and act in situations are deeply influenced by the metaphors we use to describe those situations. It is no wonder that the Scriptures use a rich variety of metaphors to help us understand life in Christ (including, of course, the metaphor of biological life itself).

This fact of life matters for the way we disagree online. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson describe in their book Metaphors We Live By, a dominant metaphor in our culture for argument is competition: sports or battles. (We take and lose ground, score points, etc.) This isn’t entirely bad; war metaphors can underline the seriousness of the contention, for instance, or the need for effort and readiness (just look at Eph. 6). But I think it’s easy to let these metaphors get the best of us by keeping us from arguing effectively and (far more important) loving those with whom we argue.

So I’d like to propose that we think about our arguments less as competitions and more as gardening: planting and watering seeds while praying they will bear fruit. Competitions bring immediate results. Sports are attention-grabbing, and bring glory to the victor. Battles are won by a killing stroke that destroys the enemy. But gardening is long-term: we may never know how God will use our words in someone’s future. Planting is a quiet, unassuming endeavor: the farmer must trust God. And we water, but God makes life grow.

In my own life, I’ve very rarely had my mind changed by a forceful argument made by an aggressive stranger on the Internet. But the deepest and longest-lasting changes, the ones that move not just my head but my affections, have come about not through a sudden clang of words hit against each other. They have come through careful, charitable, winsome arguments made repeatedly by people who didn’t seek to press battered opponents and destroy their pride, but instead simply planted an idea, and trusted God with the results.

So if you want to convince others – and if you want to love – think less like the characters of Inception and more like a sower of seeds. And pray to the Lord of the Harvest to bring thirty, sixty, or a hundred-fold results.

Grace and peace.

Tags: argument, metaphor