When I was in high school I joined the debate team. Up to that point I hadn’t been very good at many other things, but in debate I placed in the first tournament in which I ever competed — the LD, or Lincoln-Douglass, Debate (named after a debate between President Lincoln and Frederick Douglass).
In competitive debate, you know the debate topic beforehand, which is called a resolution. In LD Debate, topics change every two months. This fall the resolutions are:
Resolved: Countries ought to prohibit the production of nuclear power.
Resolved: The United States ought to limit qualified immunity for police officers.
High school students across the country are debating these topics all semester in competitions each weekend. The topic when I went to the national qualifiers was, “Human genetic engineering is morally justified.”
The great thing about competitive debate is that you never know which side of the resolution you have to argue. Some rounds you have to argue in the affirmative, supporting the resolution, and in some rounds you have to argue the negative, going against the resolution.
Sometimes, you know the arguments for both sides so well, it’s hard to pick a side in real life. To this day, it’s hard for me to become an ideologue on any topic, but especially on topics I’ve debated or fully researched.
As an aside, let it sink in that high school students across the country are (at weekly tournaments) civilly debating topics of serious international and domestic consequence. Let it also sink in that the two adults who want to be leaders of the free world cannot seem to do the same because their reputations and campaigns are tainted by scandal, conspiracy and lamentable behavior of the lowest variety. High school students acting like grown-ups. Grown-ups acting like kids — or worse.
One thing debate taught me is that there are two (or often more) completely different (and completely valid) sides to any moral or policy topic. It taught me how to view things from different perspectives, and to weigh the evidence from all sides, not just the side I hold a personal bias towards.
In his letter to the church at Corinth, Paul encourages the church not to choose sides or loyalties to former pastors:
I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?” (1 Corinthians 3:2-4, NRSV)
The people in this church were taking sides based on who led them to the Lord, or perhaps who visited them when they were sick, or who assisted with a loved one’s funeral. Corinthian Christians seemingly held such strong loyalties for people they viewed as leaders that Paul has to remind them that such loyalties are not from above.
A few observations are in order here. Observations are one of the lynchpins of a strong debate case. Sometimes, before even arguing your side, it pays to sit back and observe.
Observation 1. If strongly choosing sides between former pastors is described as an infantile exercise which threatens Christian unity, what of strongly choosing sides between potential presidents when both candidates represent positions, policies and shortcomings antithetical to the gospel? “Choose the lesser of two evils,” you may say. Paul might say, “Grow up!”
Observation 2. When Christians argue and quarrel among themselves about spiritual things (like who’s a better pastor), Paul names it as worldly — “of the flesh.” How much more worldly is it when we digress to arguing over worldly things (politics), which seems surely “of the flesh” (with every possible innuendo fully applying in 2016).
Observation 3. Paul reminded the church not only that their leaders are human, but that they are human also, and that they have a long way to go in realizing the kind of unity Christ prays for in Gethsemane. I wonder how far we have to go today to realize the unity that Christ desires.
Debate coaches and teachers across the country strive weekly to create well rounded human beings who see the value of both sides, and who temper their desire to argue by asking good questions. It’s a shame they eventually graduate high school and enter the real world.