Political arguments over dinner are not pleasurable, and certainly do not help with the digestive process. But that's what I found myself in one night last week in Daytona Beach. We were with a small group of friends at a local sushi bar. For starters, the edamame and beef sliders were delicious. Sushi isn't really my thing, though, so I don't know for sure what we had for the main course. But it was good.

I passed on the sake.

Two men at our table began a discussion of America's immigration policy -- a subject I think I introduced by telling them that Daniela had just received her green card, and of the long, arduous process she had gone through to get it. It became heated rather quickly as the talk moved to separating children from their parents, the "dreamers", and the difference between illegal immigrants and refugees seeking asylum. It seemed to fall along familiar party lines after a while, and soon expanded to talk of racism, Jim Crow, and the evils of the welfare state.

The more outspoken gentleman did not realize at first that he was talking to someone very intimately involved in these issues, who has been for decades on the front lines of every one of these debates. A confidant of US Presidents and religious and political leaders from around the world, he has written books on the subjects we were now discussing over shrimp and rice. That didn't seem to matter much, though, for the other guy had his talking points and was sticking to them. There was a lot of talking over, and past, each other.

I didn't say much, if anything, as the two of them jabbed the air with their chopsticks. I didn't have the passion of the one man, or the ready command of the facts that the other had. So I just listened. Things calmed down eventually and the meal came to an end amiably enough. No opinions were changed, though. And that's what saddened me most as we drove back to our place. Is it even possible to have a political discussion in these highly polarized times?

”You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts", Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously said. That's true, it seems to me -- but today it is hard to even agree on what those facts are. People only watch the cable news channel that they agree with, and only read the newspapers that report stories the way they want to believe things actually happened. Most discussions, unlike the one I observed in the restaurant, are held in an "echo chamber" as we spend most of our time talking only with those who agree with us already. Our particular view is never challenged and the other point of view is never even presented. It's easy to begin to believe that most people agree with us. 

A Rasmussen survey indicates that nearly one third of Americans now believe that a civil war could break out in this country in the next five years. I'm not that pessimistic, but I do worry about where all of this angry rhetoric and polarization is taking us. And if we cannot have thoughtful conversations with others, where we listen more than we speak and try our best to understand the other position, where does that eventually take us but to violence?

 How much better it would be if we were all a bit more humble in our opinions. If we at least entertained the notion that we might be wrong and the other guy could possibly be right.

I encourage people to read widely, across the spectrum of opinion. To watch one network's reporting of a story and then at least two others to balance it out. Extremes are popular and easy to understand -- but the real truth is often more complicated and nuanced than that. Name-calling and bullying should not be used. That kind of stuff usually indicates an argument that is weak on facts anyway, a last resort.

"Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry", says James 1:19. "For man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires".

Many of these hot button issues today have deep moral and religious implications, of course, and that is why our emotions and rhetoric get so heated. These are serious matters, indeed. Christians need to care, and need to speak out of our hearts and from  convictions about them. But we should carry on these conversations in a way that best represents Jesus. Respectfully, humbly, and with grace, in an attempt to change hearts and not just to win arguments.

Interestingly, there was another dinner the next night in Daytona. These same two men, at the table of friendship, were able to do this very thing the second time around -- and it was beautiful.

When someone wants to draw me into a political discussion I will only to do it if they will first agree to do so in a good spirit. With certain rules: That we will not interrupt each other, for example. To give each other the right to "revise and extend our remarks" if we realize that we have misspoken or exaggerated a point -- that is, to take something back that didn't come out right or as we meant it. To ask sincere questions.

And, if I am talking to a Christian, to repeatedly come back to the gospel and to what Jesus might have said about it all. He cannot be excluded from any of our conversations. That's when we have to face the fact that our LORD is neither Republican nor Democrat, and His concerns are broader than narrowly American interests. And we must agree that we will not judge a person's Christian faith, sincerity, or integrity by whether or not she agrees with us.

At the end of the day, at the conclusion of the meal, when the smoke clears -- we are still brothers and sisters in Christ.

Last night I saw the powerful new documentary on the work of Fred Rogers, “Won’t You be my Neighbor?" His approach to children over the years and the things he taught preschoolers through television seem just as timely now as ever -- and for people of all ages: Be kind. Give and receive love. Accept one another, and accept yourself. Be a good neighbor to all. Things we all should have learned in kindergarten -- or maybe at church.