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Are there some topics and issues where we just can’t have a winsome conversation? For many listeners, abortion is likely high on the list. It often seems impossible to find common ground between being pro-choice and being pro-life. Today on the podcast, Tim is joined by Dr. Julia Hejduk (Ph.D.), a professor of Classics at Baylor University. Julia speaks with Tim about the work she has been doing and the friendships that have come about as she seeks to be a bridge-builder on this contentious, moral issue. They discuss a unique event that took place at Santa Clara University in 2018: A Conversation Between Enemies in the Abortion War, the curiosity to know why some women choose abortion, and the Julia's story of her friendship with a woman who holds ideological differences.

Transcript

Tim Muehlhoff: Welcome to the Winsome Conviction podcast. My name is Tim Muehlhoff. I'm a professor of communication here at Biola University in La Mirada, California. I'm also the co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project that seeks to open lines of communication rather than close them. Is it possible that with all the vitriol today that we can open lines of communication that respect common ground, intellectual humility? We certainly hope so.

But if I were to ask you as a listener what is your Mount Rushmore of topics that you think it's impossible to have a Winsome conversation about, there's just no way we could tackle those issues. Well, my Mount Rushmore would be, I think, race. Very difficult to have a conversation with the church about race. I would put LGBTQ issues in that mix. I would put also sexual identity issues, and then for sure abortion. And I think for a lot of us, abortion might be the first thing we think of. How do you have a productive, kind conversation? Well, what I love about this podcast is we make new friends all the time, and we have a brand new friend, Dr. Julia Hejduk, who is... And this is the best title in the world. I want one of these at Biola. This is Dr. Hejduk's official title is the Reverend Jacob Beverly Stittler professor of Classics at Baylor University.

Julia Hejduk: Indeed, it is.

Tim Muehlhoff: Put that on a card. That's awesome. You've also done your MA and PhD at Harvard in philology.

Julia Hejduk: Classical philology, yes.

Tim Muehlhoff: Which is great. Hey, welcome to the Winsome Conviction podcast.

Julia Hejduk: I am so happy to be here. I'm a huge fan. Really, this is the highlight of my career right here.

Tim Muehlhoff: Come on. We love that. And you just happen to be in town, which is so fun that you could be here in studio with us. Well, listen, the reason that you're here is we like to give hope in today's divisive times. I think some of us psych ourselves out pretty quickly that there's just certain things you can't talk about, and so we segment our lives and we say, "That's got to be off limits because I so respect my family. I don't want it to be divided. I love working here, and if we jump into that topic, then my workplace is going to be a place of division, and maybe somebody even loses their job." But you took part in a conversation that I absolutely found fascinating, and I want to take that as the bulk of our conversation. But on October 4th, 2018, you took part in a unique event at Santa Clara University titled A Conversation Between Enemies in the Abortion War. What is the back story to that? And why in the world did you say yes?

Julia Hejduk: Great question. Well, I'm going to have to give a little extended backstory just on me and how my views on this have evolved, first of all. I grew up in Washington. I went to the National Cathedral School in the '70s, early '80s. Very secular environment, heyday of second wave feminism. And it was an Episcopal school, so I went to chapel on Fridays, and we had Bible classes and religious classes and so on.

Nevertheless, I did not know anyone who is what I would now call pro-life. To be against women having the right to choose would be like being against women having the right to vote. It was something that no sensible person could possibly hold. And so that's where I started. I had a conversion to Christianity when I was 20, right after my junior year of college, before my senior year.

But in addition to that, just being in that environment, I think especially about my own mom who was just one of the most deeply moral, profoundly compassionate, loving people that I have ever known, in addition to being somebody that obviously I love amazingly. She died in 2013. But anyway, she was extremely sensitive to suffering. And she suffered a lot in her own life. And extremely sensitive to the suffering of other people. And she was completely pro-choice because she felt that to force a woman to bring a child into this veil of tears when that woman is already herself perhaps in a difficult situation was just cruel. It was piling suffering on suffering.

My own journey to then taking the view just... Let's just say a different view of the moral status of the being in the womb, certainly a lot changed when I became a Christian. But that deep intuitive sense that being pro-choice was completely compatible with being a thoroughly moral, compassionate, good, kind person, that remained. And it just seemed so weird to me because then as I matured in Christianity, a long story there, but I started meeting, of course, pro-life people who are also good, kind, compassionate, rational people, but who had, again, a different understanding of the moral status of the being in the womb.

But it seemed to me like these people's hearts are in the same place. In some really profound sense, they want the same things. They both are acting out of love and compassion for women, and especially women who are suffering. There has to be some way that these two can come together.

Tim Muehlhoff: I love what you just did. And there's a great communication principle in it is we got your backstory. We learned the context by which you approach a complex issue like abortion. If we took the time in most conversations just to say, "Hey, how did you get here? Who are the people that you met?" I had the exact same experience in grad school at UNC Chapel Hill. These were deeply postmodern communication theorists. I was the most conservative person in the room by a mile when it came theologically or politically, socially. But they were good people. My dissertation director, one of the top feminist communication theorists in the world, we were finishing having pizza in downtown Chapel Hill, and she said, "Oh, I got to go. I got to take hour slot at the Crisis Pregnancy Center."

Julia Hejduk: Really?

Tim Muehlhoff: I was like, "Julia, you go do that?" She goes," Tim, we all need to do that. We all need to do our part to help the community." I love that.

Julia Hejduk: That's beautiful.

Tim Muehlhoff: If you talk to me about feminists, I'll tell you the feminists I know, and they're absolutely remarkable people. To get each other's backstory I think is so incredibly important to hear how we're seeing the world because of the people that we interacted with.

Julia Hejduk: Absolutely.

Tim Muehlhoff: This conversation now makes a lot of sense that you would say yes to something that you did just hearing that background because you don't have a hostile view towards pro-choice individuals.

Julia Hejduk: I do not.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah. Okay, this thing comes, this provocative conversation. And it all happened because of an op-ed piece that you read, right?

Julia Hejduk: That's right. Yeah. Yeah, I read this op-ed that Michelle had written for the New York Times in January 2018 with the title The Women The Abortion War Leaves Out. And the gist of it, it's a great article, y'all should read it, but the gist of it is that all this arguing over the issue of whether or not abortion should be legal, whether or not it should be accessible, that's the terms of the abortion war, qua war.

But what we're not asking is, well, why is it that women actually feel that they need to have an abortion? Why do women choose abortion? And she has the analogy of a woman in an unplanned pregnancy, she's standing on some railroad tracks and a train is barreling toward her, and she's trying to figure out what to do and all the factors that go into that, especially economic factors and social factors and uncertainty and all the forces that are ranged against her. What could we do to ameliorate that situation so that she didn't feel like there was this train that was about to run her over? How could we make it more feasible for her to make the choice not to have an abortion?

Tim Muehlhoff: See, I love that analogy of the train coming right at you and you're feeling the tracks vibrate. That puts it in a different context than a person just sitting around with some friends talking about a philosophical notion of abortion. I remember the Harvard Negotiation project said, "Listen, a person who's afraid of flying actually thinks the plane's going to crash." And that's a pretty powerful emotion. And to step into that emotion, even though you want to argue right away, "Hey, airplane travel is..." But to first feel the emotion of it. And that's why I like the analogy of that train coming and feeling it. Tell us a little bit about Michelle. And then your reaction to the op-ed piece was really interesting. But who's Michelle?

Julia Hejduk: Yeah, Michelle is a law professor at Santa Clara University, and she specializes in issues having to do with abortion. It doesn't hurt that my mother was also a lawyer. She wasn't the law professor, but she worked for the government, specialty in disabilities law. But she wrote this amazing book called Her Body, Our Laws where she...

And the thing that is so amazing about Michelle is that she has a real curiosity, a real desire to understand, which I just so admire, and I hope that maybe I've caught it a little from her. She wanted to know what happens when abortion is completely 100% illegal? And so she went actually to El Salvador where it is completely 100% illegal and discovered that, well, actually, yes, it's illegal, but you can easily obtain abortions because abortions now are done by getting a couple of pills that you can get with a smartphone.

And I think this is one thing that I feel like a lot of people on both sides of this war haven't really fully understood the implications of, that it's not... Brick and mortar abortion clinics are becoming obsolete in the same way that print news media is becoming obsolete. It's just the technology is such that when I first started getting into this, researching this area, they estimated that maybe about 40% of abortions were done by pills. Now, the estimates are closer to 70%, maybe; 80% in some places. And again, you don't even really know because if people are doing this under the radar, which can easily be done, you don't even really know what the accurate figures are on that.

Tim Muehlhoff: Now, you had a reaction to the piece. I remember you reading about this. You said it was like she was calling to you. That's an interesting way to phrase that. It had an impact on you both emotionally, intellectually, even spiritually, maybe?

Julia Hejduk: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I just felt like it was heart speaking to heart somehow. Maybe it was the spirit of my mom or maybe the Holy Spirit, I like to think, or just... I felt like our hearts were on the same frequency in a lot of ways.

Tim Muehlhoff: That's great. What a great lesson learned from communication climates. We know that part of a communication climate is this thing called acknowledgement, that what you said impacted me. It moved me in some way. It doesn't mean I agree with it per se, but it fights against what Jack Gibb, who did the original research, called detached neutrality, which is I just intellectually debate this, and it's as if you're talking to a computer. But acknowledgement is, "Hey, that touched me deeply, and I'm not sure totally what to do with that, but I allowed you to touch me." And I think that's a powerful way to establish a communication climate.

Julia Hejduk: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing that Michelle did, which I admire in some ways even more, she went into the of the reddest state when it comes to abortion, Oklahoma, and went to Pregnancy Resource Center there and just talked to the women there to try to figure out, well, what's going on? There's, I think, a stereotype about... Well, there are all kinds of stereotypes on both sides. But what she found was that these are deeply compassionate women who care about helping women. And I think she felt that heart resonance with the people there. And so she ends her book with this, yes, the abortion war would still be raging outside the windows, but what if people who have hearts to actually help women on both sides of this issue could get together in a living room and just talk and ask the question what can we do to make it so that women don't feel compelled to choose abortion?

Tim Muehlhoff: I can imagine some having the reaction I would not set one foot into that office, that building because I know exactly what you all believe, and I will not darken your doorway. What would happen if we actually did that, though? Listen, I have many assumptions about you, but I actually want to converse with you, and I have questions. And I would love to get your response, but wouldn't that be interesting if we just went to the very people we're forming negative impressions about and had conversations?

Julia Hejduk: Can you imagine what might happen?

Tim Muehlhoff: Can you imagine? But what would you say? Let's make this a little bit complex. What would you say to the in-group you belong to when you say, "Hey, guess what I did last weekend. I went to a Planned Parenthood office. I actually met the people who work there. And I got to tell you, they're pretty I compassionate people." Julia, can you imagine the reaction from your in-group?

Julia Hejduk: My in-group is a lot more sensible than you might think. I guess it depends on what people it is. But to be honest, I've talked about Michelle, I've talked about my work, and everybody is like, "Wow, tell me more. That's amazing."

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, that's great.

Julia Hejduk: And Michelle and I, in 2019, a year after that initial conversation, we appeared together at the Vita Veritas Conference at Yale.

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, nice.

Julia Hejduk: Pro-life conference. And so here you've got this pro-choice feminist talking at a pro-life conference. And people were like, "Huh." And she was like, "Yeah, these are good..." And every now and then, there would be a... There was one question from the audience during that time that was aggressive, let's say. You could see just she's been triggered here. Defense mechanisms come up. And I think it is, especially in this conversation, it's extremely difficult. You have to be really careful for avoiding landmines and tripwires. But other than that, I felt like it was a beautiful event.

Tim Muehlhoff: That's great. Let's go back to the original conversation.

Julia Hejduk: Sure.

Tim Muehlhoff: I love what the moderator said when he set up the evening. He actually said this: "This event features two nationally recognized figures, one pro-choice, one pro-life, who still believe in the possibility that abortion can be discussed and that some common ground can be found. And they believe in this not because disagreement per se is bad, but because our current discourse on this issue, whatever else it does, obscures fundamental values that should inform how we respond as persons and as a political community." Do you agree with his assessment that our current discourse on controversial issues is quite strained or maybe even polarizing?

Julia Hejduk: Oh, you think?

Tim Muehlhoff: Welcome to the Winsome Conviction podcast.

Julia Hejduk: Next question.

Tim Muehlhoff: But why? This is a question we get all the time. How did we get here that... I love that idea of her going to an Oklahoma pro-life building and walking in and saying, "Let's talk." How did we lose it? Where did we lose the ability to talk to each other? What's your best guess?

Julia Hejduk: Wow. Well, it's funny, I talked to Michelle last week, actually, and she mentioned this book by Amanda Ripley called High Conflict.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julia Hejduk: You know this book?

Tim Muehlhoff: I'm familiar with it. Yeah.

Julia Hejduk: Yeah, unfortunately, it's a subtitle of something like Why We Got Here and How We Can Get Out. I've only read about half of it. I've gotten the why we got here part. I just started yesterday. But I thought it was a terrific... Really fascinating.

But one of the things that she talks about, well, a couple of things about what she calls high conflict. High conflict is when we see things in terms of us versus them. And the objective is for us to beat them. But ironically, she says that when you are in high conflict, you will inevitably lose the thing you are most trying to protect, which I thought was really insightful. And you see this borne out in art and movies and literature. Think of Godfather II, the family is the most important thing, right?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, yeah.

Julia Hejduk: And how does it end? Think of Anakin Skywalker. He's just trying to protect his wife et cetera. Homer's Iliad, it's all there. But we, just as humans, as social animals, that we are so prone to falling into us versus them conflicts. And it's an important part of who we are. It's an important way that we construct our identity, the way we give purpose to our lives, the way we have a sense of belonging. It's deeply rewarding to feel like I'm on the right side, I'm on the right team. But the problem is that the inevitable result of that is that in some way, you demonize the people on the other side. And she has this wonderful term, conflict entrepreneurs. And she doesn't speak of this in Christian terms, but I will. You know who the ultimate conflict entrepreneur is, the enemy with a capital E, right?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, yeah.

Julia Hejduk: The accuser, the divider. Satan means accuser. Diabolos, devil, means divider. All he has to do is get people to demonize one another. And the one who wins is the demon. And the irony is it doesn't even really make that much difference whether you're on the quote, unquote, "right side." Once you have demonized another human being, you lose.

Tim Muehlhoff: But okay, I wanted to do some pushback that we receive. And this is why the abortion issue to me is in a different category. Depending on how you voted, we can have ideological political differences. But this is how the abortion debate gets framed often is, listen, but your decision that you're making is taking a life. It is taking a life made in the image of God, and I'm 100% believe that that's true. In a way, I can demonize you, just like I would demonize any other person who took the life of another person, this is pretty clear from scripture that you are taking a life, and so I am on the right side, and you are clearly on the wrong side. That's how it gets framed, which very easily opens the door to demonization. What would be a quick response if a person responded that way to you, "Boy, maybe that applies to other issues, but the abortion issue is really cut and dry."

Julia Hejduk: Well, and I will say that that is why this particular issue, it feels like there's no possible common ground, right?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah. Yes.

Julia Hejduk: It feels like it's just black and white. And if you believe that it's wrong to intentionally take the life of an innocent human being, then we've got to do everything we possibly can to stop that. A couple of answers. One of them is I think it's really important to acknowledge that abortion is a response to fear. And I think that most people on either side would probably agree with that statement, right?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah.

Julia Hejduk: And again, given the technology that we now have, in a way, what you're trying to do is persuade a woman who is holding a lighted candle not to blow it out. And that's a very different situation, different communication situation from a guy has a gun and you need to disarm him or shoot, right?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah.

Julia Hejduk: By increasing the amount of fear, by attacking somebody, by attacking their position or their core beliefs, you can really do only harm, I think. And this is why I say... I keep using the word counterproductive for the way some of the pro-life side is. Not all of them. Now, we say pro-life; that encompasses a lot of different things, some of which I think are beautiful and glorious in doing exactly what's right. But some of the ways in which this war is being conducted, I think, really are counterproductive when you realize that it's really about allaying people's fears. That is the most important thing. And when you instead attack them, it just makes it worse.

Tim Muehlhoff: See, this all to me sounds like a heart attitude. Before you enter into the conversation, you make some decisions at the heart level. Because the moderator suggested that even with a potentially volatile issue like abortion, common ground be found. But that's a heart decision heading in if I've headed in and think there is no common ground; it's a black and white issue. How do you deal with your heart as you enter into this conversation with Michelle that you're going to be open to possibilities that we're going to find common ground? What do you have to do even before the first word is uttered that night in the conversation? What preparatory work do you do?

Julia Hejduk: Pray.

Tim Muehlhoff: Pray what? Pray what?

Julia Hejduk: Pray more.

Tim Muehlhoff: Love it.

Julia Hejduk: Ask other people to pray for me.

Tim Muehlhoff: But to pray what? To pray what?

Julia Hejduk: Yeah. You really want to know, okay, my prayer that I pray every morning-

Tim Muehlhoff: Yes.

Julia Hejduk: ... before I get out of bed?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yes. Yes.

Julia Hejduk: Okay. Here, we're wading into dangerous waters, perhaps. But here's what I pray. Well, I pray several prayers, but the one that may be most problematic for some of your listeners is that I pray this prayer in Latin. I'm entirely yours. All that I have is yours. I entrust all that is mine to you. Please give me your heart, Mary. As in Mary, the mother of Jesus. You know who Mary.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Julia Hejduk: Even Protestants know who Mary is.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yes. But the sentiment of the prayer is really powerful. What is it about that prayer that resonates with you that drew you to that particular prayer?

Julia Hejduk: Because I think that ultimately the whole Christian life is about learning to cultivate a heart like Mary's. And I think one of the reasons that Jesus gave us His mother as the model Christian is that it's very easy for us to have a distorted view of God, of God, the Father, even of Jesus Christ because of... I don't know, on your podcast, you often talk about He overturned the tables and He got angry. And we can talk about that more later too, but can you imagine Mary being angry?

And so here's the thing. Imagine her holding for the first time... It's the first Christmas morning, and she is holding her baby that she has longed for, longed to see for nine months, and locking eyes with her newborn for the first time. And just that look of just rapture and love and tenderness that all the love that any mother has ever had for her child in that look. But now imagine Mary as the representative of Israel, and they're longing for the Messiah, for the Savior, for the one who would save them from oppression forever.

And now imagine her as a representative of the whole human race and longing to be healed of the primal wound of our separation from God that happened with the fall. And all of that love, that intimacy, that rapturous delight in this tiny little human being that she's holding in her arms, that is how God looks at us. That is how He looks at me, how He looks at you, how He looks at Michelle, how He looks at Joe, how He looks at Donald, how He looks at every single human being. And Mary is the human image of the maternal heart of God. And I think if we focused a little more on that, on cultivating that awareness of our own belovedness, and then allowing God's love and grace to flow from us through us to other people, that that would just be a more helpful way of approaching the issues that we are dealing with today.

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, it obviously made a huge impact on Michelle because she said something during it that I thought was so good. And there's so many lessons we can draw from what she says. Responding to you, she says this: "She read it." Now, let's just stop and draw a lesson really quick. She is saying that you took the time to read her book. What a principle, right?

Julia Hejduk: Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff: We're so quick to judge, but if I've not taken the time to actually read or listen to the podcast in its entirety, then our credibility has been deeply compromised. Imagine her response if you had not read her book. I wonder what kind of a conversation you would have.

Julia Hejduk: Yeah. I had at least read her article, but the book just taught me so much more. Well, look, I'm an academic; I read for a living. I teach people to read for a living, so that's well within my comfort zone. But I think that reading is one of the main ways that we enter into the imaginative space of another human being and their thought world and whatever. But it's also is low hanging fruit. It's easy to pick up a book and read it.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah. But you devoured it. She makes this comment: "She read it in four days during the semester." Which just shows I am captivated by your thought. I'm really engrossed with your perspective. It doesn't necessarily mean I agree with it, but let's go to the first objection. I could see a person saying, "Okay, I'm precisely not going to read the book of a pro-choice person. I do not want to have those thoughts in my mind because I don't want to be taken away from biblical truth." Julia, what would be your take on isn't it dangerous to read books from people who have different perspectives outside of the Christian tradition as we see it?

Julia Hejduk: I would say if that feels dangerous to you, then your faith must not be very sound. All truth is God's truth. There's no true fact or idea anywhere in the world if my faith is true that could actually conflict with it. Now, if I encounter something that does conflict with my Christian faith and that thing is true, then my Christian faith needs to be adjusted to fit that truth, right?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah.

Julia Hejduk: But just the whole idea that we are under some sort of threat from anything that's true is, I just think, misguided.

Tim Muehlhoff: And as an educator, I would simply add don't read this book by yourself. I would read it in community that you can be talking to fellow Christians, bouncing ideas off each other. When I did my master's in PhD at UNC Chapel Hill, I had a friend on staff with crew. I was on staff the entire time with crew during my ÌÒ»¨ÊÓƵ education. We'd grab lunch. And I would say, "Listen, I'm reading some really interesting stuff. Tell me what you think about this." And he was my sounding board. I think that's very valuable to do it in community.

Okay. She goes on, she goes on. She goes, "Yeah, we calendared our first conversation, and in that first conversation, as Julia said, we started by staking our ground. And before I tell you about the ground we staked out, I want to tell you about how we asked the question. Because it wasn't just like, well, what do you think? Should it be illegal or illegal? It was why do you think it should be illegal or legal? Why do you care about this issue? And just the shift from what to why I think made it really clear that I was dealing with a human being, not an enemy." That's an interesting communication principle; rather the why than start with the what.

Julia Hejduk: Yeah. Well, you see what happens when you change the question. And I feel like with the whole abortion issue, part of the problem is that we're asking the wrong question. We're focusing on the wrong thing. We're focusing on the thing that we know we by definition will never find agreement on rather than on something that we can find agreement on.

Tim Muehlhoff: The backstory. I love Proverbs 20, verse 5, "The thoughts of a person are like deep waters." Right?

Julia Hejduk: Right.

Tim Muehlhoff: And to surface that to say, "Why is this so important to you?" My dissertation director, I already mentioned a feminist theorist, she said she converted to Buddhism.

Julia Hejduk: Really?

Tim Muehlhoff: As an adult, she converted. And she basically said, "The church wasn't given any money to help women. It was all going overseas. And so women were really suffering here in the States, but all the money had to go to foreign territories and nobody cared about women. Buddhists care about all beings." And to hear that was like a light went on. We're not talking about the resurrection, we're talking about a perception that the church doesn't care about women. And I remember sharing with her, James, true religion, the sight of God is caring for women, orphans in distress." And she literally said to me, "That's in the Bible." I said, "Oh, yeah, yeah."

Julia Hejduk: That's great.

Tim Muehlhoff: I love that shift. Tell me why. And I think all of us can do that. Tell me why do you believe? And then I thought it was so interesting that she said, "I'm dealing with a human being, not a academic who it's all facts like this is a chess match, an intellectual chess match." How important is the humanization of a person in the abortion conversation? How important is it to humanize each other as we wrestle with these issues?

Julia Hejduk: Well, it's important not just in this conversation, but in literally everything, in every interaction that we have with another human being. You know what it's called? It's called love, which is what we are actually called to do. Another interesting principle in this High Conflict book is that she says, "If you want a person to change, they will not be willing to change in the ways that you want them to until they feel that you understand and accept them as they are right now." Which that was a light bulb moment for me. And yeah, I just think that understanding is so crucial to all human relationships. One of the things my mom said was, "There is no greater gift a human being can give than understanding."

Tim Muehlhoff: But you know what struck me? My dissertation was actually on marital conflict. I love to remind my wife when we're having a disagreement.

Julia Hejduk: "I'm the expert."

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah. "Where did you get your PhD, in marital conflict?" I'm not saying it goes well. But I opened it with a quote from John Gottman, one of the top relational experts, who says, "It is virtually impossible to take advice from a person unless they first feel you have understood them."

Julia Hejduk: Exactly.

Tim Muehlhoff: Isn't that great?

Julia Hejduk: It's great. It's so true.

Tim Muehlhoff: And it's so disarming. This isn't I'm going to debate you out of your stance, this is I'm simply going to step back and lead with curiosity and to say, "Tell me about this journey you've been on. Who are the people that have most influenced your thinking about this? What books could I read that would most bring me up to speed? What podcasts? These events that happen in life, tell me the seminal events in your life that really changed your thinking." Anybody can do that because you really are listening, affirming their journey, and then summarizing what you're hearing. Boy, that's a great skill set. We need more of that.

Julia Hejduk: Yeah, we do. Yeah, and this thing called looping, I'm sure you've talked about-

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, explain that, explain that. Yeah, it's a great-

Julia Hejduk: This idea that when you're really listening to somebody, you ask them a personal question, they tell you their story, and then can you play that back to them, maybe not word for word, but in such a way that they will say, "Yeah, that's it. That's exactly what I said." And the looping part is that when they say, "Well, yeah, kind of, but here's this other thing," right?

Tim Muehlhoff: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Julia Hejduk: And so this feedback, "Okay, so this is what you meant." And you keep repeating that until you finally can say what they actually believe. I guess you might well talk about steel manning too. Can you steel man their argument? Can you express it in terms that are perhaps even stronger than the ones that they would use to express it in?

Tim Muehlhoff: And Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown linguist who wrote the argument culture says we do the exact opposite. I purposely, for the sake of the argument, give the weakest version of your argument because it's so much easier to attack that.

Julia Hejduk: Yeah, straw men are much easier to knock down than steel men.

Tim Muehlhoff: And I think as Christians, we feel this. Sometimes in pop culture, you watch a Netflix series, and the way they present Christianity, you're like, "Oh my goodness, that is not even remotely what we believe when it comes to certain issues." We feel the sting a it. We should try to steel man.

And let me just add one thing about looping, I love that idea, is we need to do it with emotion. Because again, this is back to Jack Gibb is if you say to me, "I've had the worst day of my life," and I reflect back to you, "It sounds like you had a pretty bad day," it's like, "Yeah, times 10, times 10. Give me the emotion that I'm relaying that to you." That's really powerful. Well, listen, can we have you back on the podcast? Would you-

Julia Hejduk: Of course. I'd be honored.

Tim Muehlhoff: Because we have not wrapped up all of the abortion war, but this is a great start, the interpersonal things that you and Michelle did. But I'd like to revisit that if you'd come back on in a future podcast.

Julia Hejduk: I would be very happy to do so. Thank you.

Tim Muehlhoff: Truly. And thank you.

Julia Hejduk: Thanks.

Tim Muehlhoff: Thank you for joining the Winsome Conviction podcast. If you want to learn more about us, just go to WinsomeConviction.com. You can listen to all of our past podcasts as well as sign up for our quarterly newsletter. Thank you for listening. We don't take that for granted.