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Transcript

Tim Muehlhoff: Those kind of moments are precisely the moments where we say, look, I don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, Buddhist, Christian, gay straight, thank you for helping with my kids and I will help you with your kids. Those are the moments I think we need to take a look at, right, and see if we can't keep our antennas up to notice when those moments can present themselves.

Rick Langer: Welcome to the Winston conviction podcast. My name's Rick Langer, and I'm a professor here at ŷ����ַ as well as the Director of the Office of Faith and Learning. And, one of the co-directors of the Winsome Conviction Project.

Tim Muehlhoff: My name is Tim Muehlhoff. I'm a professor of communication here at ŷ����ַ, as well as the co-author with Dr. Rick Langer of two books, Winsome Persuasion, and Winsome Conviction. Please check it out on Amazon, buy a thousand copies each, we would appreciate it. And, I'm also the co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project.

Rick Langer: We have had a great time doing this over many... actually, I think we've had, I don't know how many episodes by now.

Tim Muehlhoff: We should find out.

Rick Langer: We should find out a lot. One of the things you want to pick up on today was kind of some things that are related to current events and some of the impact that, that has on us. So Tim, let me turn over to you.

Tim Muehlhoff: So let me set up to today's podcast with a totally true story. We moved to North Carolina. I was doing my grad work at UNC, Chapel Hill, which let me just say right now-

Rick Langer: Don't bother.

Tim Muehlhoff: Just beat Mike Krzyzewski. His last game. He's retiring from Duke and it was in Cameron Indoor Arena. 98 former Duke players were there. It was going to be the perfect night of celebration. And, UNC, Chapel Hill walked in and beat him by 13 points. The look on Krzyzewski's face was priceless. It is now on my screen saver on my computer and a tattoo on my chest.

Rick Langer: We just wanted to know how Tim reconciles this with being the co-director of the Windsome Conviction Project.

Tim Muehlhoff: It's called the old Testament. Okay. So we digress. We digress. So we just moved to North Carolina and Rick would get warning that a hurricane's coming in. Have you ever experienced a hurricane?

Rick Langer: I have. A typhoon.

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, a typhoon. I was in Guam for typhoon tip.

Rick Langer: I was in Guam for Typhoon Tip.

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, we did not know what a hurricane would feel like. It was Hurricane Fran. And, I remember Rick actually putting on a rain coat when it was hitting us and going to stand outside. Maureen's like, my wife, "What are you doing?" I said, "I've never stood in a hurricane. I would like to do it." So Rick, I literally stood there and weighed in like a Michael Jackson video. I weighed in as far as I could. And, that wind, it was amazing. That force of that wind. And, it did a number to our community. Trees were down absolutely everywhere. We were without power for 10 days. The kids were off of school for an entire month.

Rick Langer: Wow.

Tim Muehlhoff: Fran did a huge number. We had a lot of elderly within our neighborhood and no electricity so food's going bad. And, the cool thing was we all came together. I remember a guy knocking on my door, he had a chainsaw and he said, "Hey man, I noticed you got some trees. Need them cut down?" I had never met the guy before. And I said, "Yeah, absolutely." By the way, got a chance to use a chainsaw, Rick.

Rick Langer: Oh, that sounds dangerous.

Tim Muehlhoff: It was dangerous.

Rick Langer: Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff: We had a cookout because we had stuff in freezers and it was all fine. So we didn't have any electricity, but we all had charcoal. Rick, it brought our community together and people still refer back to it, clear up until the time that we moved. We lived overseas for a year. But, it was a time when a neighbor became your friend and the elderly really needed our help. And, it was so cool to meet people. And, as we're doing work, people would bring stuff out for us to drink. It was an amazing time. And, that got us thinking, could it be possible with all the division in the United States today, both inside and outside the church, is it possible that things like Fran come along, that we can set aside our differences long enough to focus on this pressing issue and it actually could have a unifying feature?

So obviously this makes us think of something that all of us are thinking about, and that is the crisis we're seeing in Ukraine right now. There is 1.5 million refugees have left Ukraine in 10 days. One person commented, that's the most refugee since World War II. Doctors Without Borders have described the event in Ukraine as nothing short of catastrophic. We like to watch Meet The Press and they showed this story of a mother and father rushing their 18-month old son into a Ukrainian hospital where he died. And the mother, father and doctors were just weeping in the hallway.

And so Rick, here's what our topic is today. Is it possible to set aside political differences, theological differences, social differences, and focus on a crisis that not only addresses the needs of the crisis, but also brings us together for a short period of time that we work on this issue despite our differences?

Rick Langer: Yeah. So I think this would be a great topic for us to investigate a little bit. And, Tim, when you first mentioned this to me as an idea, I had mixed feelings. Let me tell you why. I'm, Tim, there's a big difference between a snowstorm or a hurricane and a war in Ukraine. Now, that was my first reaction, I thought, okay, let me unpack that a little bit just to myself. And I go, why do I feel that viscerally different? And, one of the things is obviously, with a hurricane or snow, we literally like an insurance policy, we'll call that an act of God, whether you happen to be a believer or not, the insurance policy doesn't care. They're just saying, look, this is one of those things that just happens.

A war in Ukraine is not a thing that just happens, but rather a thing that is a product of a bunch of decisions that human beings make that may very well be evil and need to be called out as evil or whatever else that might come along. So I had that sort of attention about it. So I guess maybe because of that, the tragedies that happen feel a little different. It isn't God you get to blame for them or whatever your sense of higher power might be for those who aren't believers. But rather you feel like there's an individual or a country or another group that you can just pin the blame on because of this episode.

Now, I don't want to take the time to turn that into our conversation topic. Let me just make that officially duly noted. What you mentioned, Tim, was actually the part of it that I do think works fine is to say, look, however you feel in whatever needs to be said about a war in Ukraine, the bottom line is what has come out of that is 1.5 million refugees. And, the question is, is there anything that we can do? And, are there things that we can do together? And I think that is not only a legitimate question, but an important one.

Tim Muehlhoff: And then, later we can talk about how to muck up the whole thing.

Rick Langer: All the ways it goes bad?

Tim Muehlhoff: All the ways it goes bad because you just feel this incredible urge to say something that you want to unload as you're helping the refugees that could stop the participation. Because that's what we're focusing on is, not two different groups helping the refugee crisis. It's two groups coming together that have very different political, social-

Rick Langer: Yeah. Groups that might not have come together otherwise who are coming together because of this need.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah. And, that's what I think is fascinating. And, that's what we need to take a look at. And by the way, we're seeing it. So on the same Meet The Press that Maureen and I were watching, Adam Schiff, a Democrat who's also the chair of the Intelligence Committee said there is strong bipartisan support to give aid to the refugees. And, he is very encouraged by that. And, he's also encouraged that while most Americans agree, we're not going to get into a ground war with Russia, that there are strong support for these sanctions. And so, here's Adam Schiff who's a pretty controversial figure with Democrats and Republicans, but he's really encouraged that we're coming together and this issue is bringing us together.

Rick, I just wonder if we couldn't look for those kind of opportunities. We get it here, right? We get not hurricanes, but we get wildfires. I remember, we were the next neighborhood ready to be evacuated and we're all caring for each other's kids. We were at a family like marriage conference speaking, and a friend of ours called and said, "Hey, I got your kids, don't worry. I got your kids and I'm taking them to my house." And we're like, wait, what? Because, there were flames, you could see flames by the high school.

So those kind of moments are precisely the moments where we say, look, I don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, Buddhist, Christian, gay straight, thank you for helping me with my kids and I will help you with your kids. Those are the moments I think we need to take a look at, Rick, and see if we can't keep our antennas up to notice when those moments can present themselves.

Rick Langer: And it's probably good to think as well that it doesn't always take a crisis event. Sometimes all it takes is a consciousness of a crisis that your community has, is maybe an ongoing situation. We've had some of that happening here in Orange County, recently with crisis with the homeless and people's overall political orientation to the homeless can vary. But, I am struck by the fact that for at least for the people I travel with and I do have contact with people kind of across the political spectrum, the idea of caring for the basic needs of a homeless person really does resonate with most people. And, it's one of those places you will find people converging to do particular things. And, I do just want to say, that's wonderful. Let's fan the flames of that because those sorts of legitimate needs, we can all say, look, whatever else we disagree on, here's something we agree on.

Tim Muehlhoff: This isn't a totally foreign thought to us. In our book, Winsome Persuasion: Christian Influence in a Post-Christian world, we actually had a chapter on loose connections. Now, loose connections is a term by Robert Wuthnow, where he says communities can come together and form a loose connection, which means this isn't going to be forever and ever, Amen. I know we have differences, but can we come together and address the refugee crisis, homelessness, climate control, wildfires. That's a concept by Wuthnow.

Now, in the book, Rick, if you remember this, we use as a test case, Focus on the Family with their new president, Jim Daley, who is a product of the foster care system. He's actually come and spoken here at ŷ����ַ. Well, he was very concerned about how Colorado's foster system had really broken down. And then, he read an article in The Independent, which is one of the most liberal newspapers in Colorado. Can I just say one parenthetical comment real quick? How cool that he's reading The Independent.

Rick Langer: Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff: You know what I mean?

Rick Langer: To at least hear the voices of those on the other side of so many issues. Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff: And, we've talked about that a ton that we probably need to expand our reading and exposing us. So, I love the fact that he's looking at The Independent and they talk about foster care. So he calls them. He talks to the editor and said, "Let's have lunch." The editor goes, "Yeah, let's do it at your place. I've always wanted to see what Focus on the Family is like." Because they had attacked Focus on the Family, relentlessly, Dr. James Dobson.

So they do have lunch and they say, "Okay, let's do it. Let's do a one day event focusing on foster care." Now, what's interesting is, both had to go back and sell it to their constituents. Jim Daley, when he was here, I actually got a chance to have lunch with him. And, he said they lost a lot of financial support because Focus on the Family co-sponsored this with The Independent on foster care. And, a great part of the art article in The Independent is that editor had to speak to his constituents, that they're going to do a partnership with Focus on the Family. And, it started this way, Rick, no, hell hasn't frozen over.

But, I love that, a one day event. Jim Daley has a great quote that says, "Listen, we're big boys and girls, we understand we have very deep disagreements, but we agree in one thing, the foster care system is broken and maybe we can help." I love that.

Rick Langer: Yeah. Now, let's go back to the Ukraine thing just to take it back into kind of our contemporary situation and think a little bit about what might make that go bad and how might we avoid-

Tim Muehlhoff: Bringing up Duke?

Rick Langer: Yeah. Things like that.

Tim Muehlhoff: Okay.

Rick Langer: Whatever it might be. Yes.

Tim Muehlhoff: Well said.

Rick Langer: So what do you think?

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, let me share one with you that I hear regularly when it comes to Ukraine, people will say this, if president Trump was in office, this would not have happened. He would not have invaded and we wouldn't be oil dependent because of this liberal agenda, protecting the climate. And, now we're oil, gas dependent on places like Russia. And if we had a strong leader in office, he never would've gone into Ukraine. Now, whether that's true or not, that will kill the partnership. If you say that on the first meeting, I don't think we're progressing. If The Independent and Jim Daley, their first meeting, they start to hash out differing views on abortion, same sex marriage, I don't think we ever get to foster care.

Rick Langer: So that's an interesting thing, is that in a sense, for a thing like this, if you're going to pick up this issue you have in common, you have to be willing to set down the issues that you don't.

Tim Muehlhoff: Temporarily.

Rick Langer: For that moment, for that situation, for that occasion. And, there's nothing wrong with acknowledging the fact that we haven't changed our opinion about these areas of difference. But to say that we are choosing not to focus on that at this moment with these resources, because there's another thing that we have to do that we can do together.

Tim Muehlhoff: And, let me add one proverb that we've talked about a bunch on this podcast, a wise man overlooks an insult. So I remember going to a family function and there was somebody invited to the family function that was the black sheep kind of a person like this. And, I remember my mom grabbing me and saying this to me, Rick, she looked at me, she said, "Make this work." Right? Which was really good. So sure enough, we're sitting there halfway through dinner and this person just says something. And, I was, "Oh, are you kidding me?" And I literally thought of that proverb, a wise man overlooks an insult.

And so I said, Lord, help me overlook this. Because my mom said, make this work. I think that's a great thing to have at the back of your head, for the sake of the refugees, make this work. So even if the other person brings up something that you're like, man, those are fighting words, right? That's a shot across the bow. I'm not going to take the bait because, you know what, the refugees really do need help and I think we really can do good. So let's partner on this and I'm going overlook that. Maybe later we can talk about it, but, right now, the focus is foster care or refugees.

Rick Langer: That is a great point, Tim, when there's a part of this where you're setting that aside to b