Scroll through YouTube and you will find them — the “1 vs. 20” debates hosted by Michelle Daf on The Dr. Daf Show. One atheist, one Muslim, one New Age adherent sit across from 20 Christian women, and for five rounds they trade worldviews.
The format is admirable: No shouting, no insults, just guided prompts and responses. It is a rare thing to see people with profoundly opposed beliefs sit in the same room and listen. And yet, something gnaws beneath the surface.
Nicole Wiesen
The Dr. Daf Show succeeds at what most platforms fail to do. It creates connection across difference. In a society where algorithm-driven feeds isolate us into ideological echo chambers, 20 Christian women and a single atheist conversing for two hours is a quiet act of courage. The positive is real: People are talking, not screaming. They are using words as instruments of exploration rather than weapons of destruction.
But the format also exposes a danger embedded in how we use language to debate faith. When one person stands alone against 20, the architecture of the room itself becomes a form of rhetorical pressure. Even when the conversation remains civil, the mathematics of the arrangement whisper a message: The many are correct, and the one is mistaken. Words become fortifications. Scripture is deployed not as a bridge but as a barricade.
This is where the rhetoric of sacred texts can become a source of harm. When biblical language is wielded to shame rather than illuminate, it distorts the very text it claims to honor. The Apostle Paul understood this. In Romans 14:4, he writes: “Who are you to judge the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.”
“The moment we use Scripture to shame a solitary dissenter into silence, we have abandoned the text’s own instruction.”
Paul does not say the servant will stand because the majority is right. He says the servant’s fate belongs to God alone. The moment we use Scripture to shame a solitary dissenter into silence, we have abandoned the text’s own instruction.
Consider what Scripture claims about the nature of God.
Genesis 1:27 declares: “So God created man in his own image; in the image of God, he created him; male and female He created them.” Read carefully; the verse is revolutionary. Both male and female are said to bear the image of God. If humanity in its male and female forms reflects the divine likeness, then God cannot be reduced to one gender.
Could God be both? The Hebrew text resists a simple answer. The word used for humanity, adam, is not gendered; it means “humankind.” God’s image is not split down the middle but shared, whole, across the full spectrum of human beings. To insist that God is exclusively male is to read into the text something it does not say and to diminish half of creation in the process.
This question of translation and authority cuts deeper when we examine the texts themselves. The Torah — the Hebrew Bible’s first five books — stands as the oldest layer of Abrahamic Scripture, written in Hebrew with portions in Aramaic, the language of the ancient Near East. It is regarded by Jews as the direct word of God.
The Christian Bible, by contrast, is a translation layered upon translation — from Hebrew and Aramaic into Greek, from Greek into Latin, from Latin into English, and from English into hundreds of modern tongues. Each translation was performed by men — fallible, shaped by their own cultures, biases and theological commitments. This does not invalidate the Bible. But when a person quotes a verse in English and declares it “the word of God,” they are quoting a text that has passed through many human hands. The Torah asks us to take that seriously.
The Quran, revealed in Arabic and regarded by Muslims as God’s direct speech, is the second oldest of the Abrahamic Scriptures. It addresses this question of authority with arresting clarity. Surah 109:6 states plainly: “To you be your religion, and to me my religion.” And in Surah 6:57: “The judgment is only Allah’s. He relates the truth and he is the best of deciders.”
Even the Christian New Testament echoes this principle. In Matthew 7:1-2, Jesus teaches: “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged.”
“None of us — not the 20, not the one — possesses the authority to tell another human being they are destined for hell.”
None of us — not the 20, not the one — possesses the authority to tell another human being they are destined for hell. We are not that divine. The Quran makes this explicit in Surah 2:112: “Whoever submits himself to Allah and is a doer of good will have his reward with his Lord. And no fear will there be concerning them, nor will they grieve.” The verse does not gatekeep salvation. It describes a posture of the heart, not a membership card.
The Dr. Daf Show gives us a window into the best and worst of how we engage across belief. But when debate becomes a performance of dominance, when Scripture is used to shame, when we forget that every text we hold has been touched by human hands and every judgment we pronounce belongs to God alone, we have lost the thread.
If we are all made in the likeness of the divine, then every person across that table — the one and the 20 — carries something sacred. The question is whether we debate to win or whether we speak to understand. The oldest Scriptures we have suggest the answer never has been about being right. It has been about being humble enough to listen.
Nicole L. Wiesen is a nationally recognized expert in Post-Incarceration Syndrome, public health social worker, consultant, lecturer and author. She is the founder of Returning Her Home, a trauma-informed reentry housing and support initiative dedicated to helping women heal, stabilize and successfully reintegrate following incarceration.