Disagreements about politics and race can put a friendship, a family dinner, or a church small group under real strain, and many people have watched a relationship end over one. In a Jude 3 Project podcast conversation, Dr. Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and Lisa Fields describe a posture that keeps the relationship alive while the disagreement stays real: you listen until you can explain how the other person reached their view, you refuse to define them by their worst idea, and you pray for them by name. This guide turns that posture into practices you can rehearse before the next hard conversation arrives.
Working alone takes about an hour. A group will need two sessions or one long one. The exercises are written for pairs and small groups, and each has a solo version. No one should be asked to name or describe a specific person or relationship. Every exercise works without disclosure.
Begin with one sentence
Think of one real person you disagree with about politics or race. Write down the single sentence you would use to describe them to a friend who has never met them. Do not polish it. Write the sentence that actually comes to mind, then fold the paper and set it aside. You will come back to it at the end.
Kim names the habit this exercise is meant to expose: we have lost the ability to separate an idea from the person who holds it. Relationships used to give a disagreement a setting, like years in the same Bible study or a church that walked with you through a loss. Without that setting, he says, “we reduce people to their ideas, their ideology, and oftentimes we reduce them to their worst moment.”
His explanation is mainly about overload, not bad character. There is so much information and so much feeling that we grab whatever simplifies it. In his words, “Not only are we simplifying issues, but we’re simplifying people.” Once a person fits in a box, Kim says, we either push the box aside and ignore it or kick it because we do not like it. What we rarely do is open it. Without unfolding your paper, ask yourself whether your sentence describes a person or a box.
Read James 1:19-20 slowly
Kim builds his practice on James 1:19-20. Read it aloud twice, slowly:
Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
Before anyone offers an interpretation, spend a few minutes on plain observation:
- James gives three instructions. Notice their order. What would change if “slow to wrath” came first?
- The word “For” introduces a reason. What reason does James give, and what does he say anger cannot produce?
- “Brethren” tells you who James is addressing. What does it mean that his first audience is fellow believers?
In the KJV wording, swift means quick and wrath means anger. James is giving instructions, not describing a temperament some people are born with, and instructions can be practiced.
Kim’s reading of the middle phrase is the turning point of this guide. He insists that being slow to speak does not mean being at a loss for words. It is what happens after real listening: “We’re slow to speak because we spent the entire time being quick to listen, not the entire time being quick to figure out what our rebuttal is to what’s being said to us.” On this reading, the pause before you answer is evidence that you were not drafting your reply while the other person talked. Kim adds that slowness to anger follows, because listening exposes how complicated the other person’s view really is.
Test the reading against the text. Does Kim’s explanation fit the order of James’s three instructions? Does it leave anything in the passage out?
First rehearsal: listening for the journey
Kim says he learned this skill in pastoral counseling. When two friends once came to him for help with a broken friendship, he could not find a book on friendship counseling, so he adapted what he used with married couples. That meant understanding where a person comes from: how their family handled conflict, which part of the country shaped them, whether they grew up in a city or a rural setting. He says we should approach people “in friendship, like in courtship,” with “the same level of curiosity to unpack people.”
Try it in pairs. Choose a low-stakes topic for the first round, such as the best way to celebrate a holiday or whether a church should have a dress code. A political topic can come later, once the group trusts the exercise.
- The speaker takes three minutes to explain how they came to hold their view, focusing on the journey, not only the conclusion.
- The listener may only ask questions. No agreeing, no correcting, no “but have you considered.” Aim for background: who taught you this, when did it start to matter to you, what experience sits behind it.
- When time is up, the listener restates the speaker’s view and reasoning in a way the speaker would sign. The speaker corrects anything that is off.
- The listener writes down the first reply that came to mind during the conversation and does not say it. Look at it together later: was it a response to what the speaker actually said?
- Switch roles.
Afterward, ask what you learned about the person that their conclusion alone would never have told you.
Alone: Pick a public figure whose politics you dislike. Find a long interview where they explain their background, not a clip. Write a paragraph about how they got to their view that they would recognize as fair.
For the facilitator: Keep the first round low-stakes on purpose. If someone wants a charged topic in the second round, both partners should agree to it first. Protect the time for restating, because that is where the skill shows and groups tend to skip it.
A test: when the topic is close to the wound
Lisa Fields adds an honest complication that keeps this from becoming a set of tips. She says people often praise her for handling gray areas well. Then she names the exception: “I realize I’m very black and white when I’m the person that’s hurt.” She widens the point: “our difficult conversations are harder when we’re closer to the things that have hurt us.”
She also describes what hurt tends to produce. When we cannot lash out at the person who wounded us, we start listing their faults to justify our anger, instead of letting God heal us so we can engage them again. Kim agrees, calling the reduction of a person a way of managing emotions too complex to hold. The other person, he adds, is probably doing the same thing, and the cycle spirals.
For many readers, disagreements about race are not abstract. They touch family history, workplace experiences, and grief. This section does not ask anyone to pretend those wounds are small. It asks a private question. Spend five minutes in silence with it, or write it out if you are alone:
On the issue that makes me most rigid, is my certainty coming from the evidence, from the place where I was hurt, or from both? How would I tell the difference?
No one shares an answer unless they choose to. A group can still discuss the general question: why does being hurt narrow what we are able to see?
There is a fair objection here. Is this a polite way to silence people who name real injustice? Kim does not say so. He asks of Jesus, “did he overthrow tables? Yes.” But he also says Jesus “was gentle and humble of heart as the default position.” Jesus describes himself in Matthew 11:29: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Lisa Fields affirms that Jesus turned over tables and that believers should too when they see injustice. Kim’s word “default” separates confronting a specific wrong from treating everyone who disagrees as an enemy. What neither speaker supplies is a rule for deciding when a particular disagreement has become an injustice that calls for confrontation. That judgment is left to the people in the room, so discuss where your group would draw the line and why.
Second rehearsal: moving the problem to the middle
Kim describes the most important shift in marriage counseling this way: “the problem is not the other person. And it’s not even a problem between us.” The problem becomes something both people face together, which he calls “an intruder against peace.”
Try this in your pairs. Write a real disputed question on a card, phrased neutrally, such as How should our church respond to racial division in our city? Put the card on the table between you, not in front of either person. Each partner names one thing they fear will happen if the question goes badly and one thing they hope for. Then look together for any fear or hope you share.
The aim is not agreement on the answer. You are finding out whether the two of you can stand on the same side of the question.
For the facilitator: If your group spans political loyalties, say plainly that this session is not trying to move anyone toward a party. The card exercise only works if both partners trust that standing on the same side of a question does not require giving up their convictions about the answer.
Prayer as the posture underneath
Kim points to Ephesians 6. After the armor of God, a reader expects a call to charge into battle. Instead the passage turns to prayer: “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;” (Ephesians 6:18). Read it carefully. This verse is about prayer for fellow believers, and in the next verse Paul asks prayer for his own boldness in preaching. Kim connects it to Jesus’ command in Matthew 5:44, which extends prayer to enemies: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
Kim is clear that this is not a tactic: “Prayer is not just the thing that we do to resolve something.” What it changes first is the person praying. He says “the transformation of our heart happens as we pray for those who are our enemies.”
To practice, take five quiet minutes. Bring to mind the person from your folded sentence and say their name silently. Pray for one specific good in their life that has nothing to do with the disagreement: their health, their work, someone they love. Then ask God to show you one thing about them you have been refusing to see. In a group, do this in silence. No one names their person.
This week: going first
Kim describes the move the whole practice requires: “I’m gonna take the first step, and even if it’s not reciprocated, I’m gonna follow the way of Jesus.” Choose one conversation this week with someone you disagree with. Pray for them by name beforehand. Then ask about their journey, restate it fairly, and pause before you reply.
Measure the conversation by what you brought to it, not by whether anyone changed their mind. Going first does not mean going toward danger. This practice is meant for disagreements, not for relationships where someone is threatening or harming you. If that describes your situation, keeping distance can be wise, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-7233.
Questions for discussion
- Look at the reply you wrote down and did not say. What does it tell you about how you were listening?
- Kim reads “slow to speak” as the result of listening. Does that reading change how you would judge your own last argument?
- Lisa Fields says nuance disappears when we are the one who was hurt. Is there a way to honor a real wound without letting it decide how we see everyone on the other side?
- Where would you draw the line between turning over a table and treating gentleness as the default? Give an example you think falls on each side.
- What happened when you moved the problem to the middle of the table? Did you find a shared hope you did not expect?
- Kim says praying for an enemy changes the one who prays. Has that been true in your experience, or has it felt hollow? What might make the difference?
Return to the sentence
Unfold the paper from the beginning and read the sentence you wrote before any of these exercises. If you had to describe the same person now, after listening, testing your own hurt, and praying for them by name, would you write the same sentence? If you would change it, write the new one underneath. If you would not, ask what you would need to learn about them before you could.