In this episode, we speak with Justin Lee about navigating difference and division in a polarised world. Justin shares his journey reconciling his identity as a gay man with his evangelical Christian upbringing, a path that led to his work fostering dialogue across divides. He explores the challenges of echo chambers, the instinct to fight or avoid disagreement, and the power of listening, storytelling, and empathy in building bridges. It’s a conversation about the courage to hold space for complexity—and for hope.
After the interview, Tim Nash and Nick Thorley reflect on their own bumpy road of navigating difference.
Interview starts at 14m 23s
WEBSITE
SOCIALS
BOOKS
Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate
QUOTES
“More and more research is suggesting that some of the things happening right now, including but not limited to the impact of social media and internet AI-based algorithms affecting how we see the world, these things are pulling us apart and causing us to become divided in new ways.”
“The more time you spend in your bubble, the more people in other bubbles start to seem not only wrong, but just nonsensical.”
“If you and I disagree strongly on some issue, and you are fully convinced that you’re right, and I’m fully convinced that I’m right, my getting angry with you, fighting with you, pushing on you, putting pressure on you to agree with me, is not going to change your mind.”
“It can be too easy to decide that every person we disagree with, we just need to cut them out of our life, or at the very least, never talk about our disagreements ever again. Then what that does is it puts us more and more into these bubbles where we’re just preaching to our own choirs.”
