After an hour of convo and asking the Qs below, this is the question I asked last to one of my best friends yesterday, "If limiting your liberty for 6 mths—until most vulnerable/front liners can receive vax— will help prevent 1000s more deaths, why aren't you willing to do that?"

The answers I hear from many who share her views are some forms of "They're coming for us! All our liberties! This is just the start! The vax will be mandatory! The sky is falling!" followed by, "I'm not going to live in fear like those who give into peer pressure & wear a mask!"

I really am struggling to understand this because—and this could be my warped childhood traumas speaking—it seems to me there's more fear beneath surface in anti-mask-vaxers than there is in those who say, "I'm willing to lay aside my liberty for 6-18 months, so others can live."

But my friend believes maskers/vaxers are living in fear because we believe the scientists/doctors/politicians and aren't exercising skepticism.

The disconnect bewilders me. We both think we're full of faith in our way and both think the other is choosing the full of fear way.

Why am I sharing this? Because I think it's just one of the million ways we are completely misunderstanding or misrepresenting others who disagree. Of course I think she's wrong to not mask/vax and she thinks I'm wrong to mask/vax.

But the first work for the Christian is to try to understand and empathize with, not to convince the other they're wrong. There's (hopefully) time for that later. But trying to understand—before convincing—is a starting place.

And I don't think most of us (myself included) start there or stay there long enough to really get it.

Hopefully we haven't whittled down our list of closest friends to mere echo chambers, hopefully there's some real disagreement still happening,

And if so, let's ask some questions today, not the rhetorical self-important ones that try to trap opponents, but the real ones of friendship like, "Help me understand?" "What's behind your belief or experience here?" "How do you perceive those who think differently?"

The work of healing giant fractures in our society happens by actions of ordinary people—ordinary Christians in this case—having the smallest of conversations. Blips on the screen in the chasm of work to be done, but question by question, conversation by conversation, we do heal.