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In the abortion debates, what does a win look like? On today’s episode, Tim resumes the conversation with Julia Hejduk (Ph.D.) on abortion and civility. They consider “the sacred cores” of pro-choice and pro-life groups, the importance of having a telos, some important communication strategies for addressing conflict, and they also draw from resources in Christianity to consider what might be a worthy goal in these debates.

Transcript

Tim Muehlhoff: Welcome to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. My name is Tim Muehlhoff. I'm a professor of communication here at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, or as we refer to it, Biola in La Mirada, California. I've also been serving as the co-director of Biola's Winsome Conviction Project we started five years ago because people were really concerned that Americans are losing the ability to talk to each other. A matter of fact, from Pew research, 97% of Americans would say that incivility is a threat to the very fabric of this country. That's why we started the project, Generous Donors. And we're not afraid to go into some hard places.

One place that we'd like to go is a debate that's been raging in this country for a long time and evokes powerful emotions, sometimes even evokes violence, and that is the abortion debate. We're looking for voices that aren't afraid to wade into this area, but to do it with understanding, civility, a propensity to find common ground. We found such a person. She's become an old friend because this is her second podcast with us.

Julia Hejduk: That's right.

Tim Muehlhoff: But Julia Hejduk is at Baylor University. She's the Reverend Jacob Beverly Stittler professor of Classics. Thank you for coming back on the podcast.

Julia Hejduk: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Tim Muehlhoff: The last podcast had to do with a very unique conversation that you had with a pro-choice activist. It was in October of 2018 at Santa Clara University. The title of it was A Conversation Between Enemies and the Abortion War. I encourage listeners to go back, listen to the first podcast. Had to do with looping, reflecting back to a person what they think, understanding a person's backstory. Incredibly important.

I want to pick up on a book that I read a long time ago by James Davison, Hunter on Culture Wars. And he said something that has always stayed with me. He said every community has what he calls a sacred core. That is what your community believes above everything else; this is the heart, the center of it. I wonder if we can engage in some perspective taking. And from your conversation with Michelle, what would you say is the sacred core of the pro-choice group?

Julia Hejduk: Yeah, I would say the sacred core of the pro-choice group is that women should be trusted to make moral decisions about their own lives, their own bodies, and whether to continue a pregnancy. In fact, I asked Michelle directly, "What's your core belief?"

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, good.

Julia Hejduk: And I think she said that pretty much in those words. She said, "My core belief is that I trust women's capacity to make sound, moral decisions and to prioritize the right values and interests when making a decision about whether to continue a pregnancy."

Tim Muehlhoff: See, and this is where context is so important. When I was at UNC Chapel Hill studying communication theory, but from a feminist perspective, because of my dissertation director, women are not trusted, profoundly not trusted. Arthur Schopenhauer had this unbelievable quote that said, "Women are the perfect teachers and nurses of children because in essence, they are a grown child." Yeah. Schopenhauer wasn't dating much, apparently. But think about that, growing up having that be the umbrella hanging over you, and now people saying, "Yeah, we don't trust your decisions. We don't trust your moral decisions." That would evoke a very powerful reaction from women or from a certain viewpoint.

Julia Hejduk: Yeah, absolutely.

Tim Muehlhoff: To know that background is so important of this is what my community has struggled with. This is what we have been wrestling with for a very long time I think is really important. At one point in this conversation with Michelle, you stated this: "The only weapon in spiritual warfare that is invincible is humility." Can we unpack that quote? First, do you think spiritual warfare is at play in the divisive and hostile way we often approach today's abortion debate?

Julia Hejduk: Well, yeah, duh.

Tim Muehlhoff: That's why they pay me the big bucks. Yeah. How does it get played out, though? I can see people disagreeing with each other. I wrote a book on marriage and spiritual battle, and people would always say, "Well, how do you know if it's a rank-and-file conflict over finances or this might have demonic influence?" How would you answer that question of what would be some telltale signs that we might've entered into demonic influence?

Julia Hejduk: I think one would be, again, and we talked about this on the last podcast, but the way people demonize one another. What does the word demonize mean? Satan is the ultimate conflict entrepreneur, and he wants us to divide into us against them, and he wants us to see things in terms that are black and white, zero-sum. And he wants us to focus on the things that are the source of conflict rather than the source of things that could potentially be the source of cooperation.

Tim Muehlhoff: Michelle commented about your humility and that it really did move her. She said this: "I don't get to hear that much in my circles in talking to abortion radicals." How would you define intellectual humility? And then how do you cultivate that? Especially when you really think you're right. How would you define intellectual humility first?

Julia Hejduk: Well, just a little side comment. It's interesting that you inserted the word intellectual before humility.

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, I did, I did, I did. We use that term all the time here? Oh, but okay, yeah. The point being-

Julia Hejduk: The point being that what about just humility, humility, simplicitor. Humility is one of those things that's really hard to talk about, especially with regard to oneself because it's like peripheral vision; you look at it and you've wrecked it. But I guess I would basically define humility from a Christian perspective as the recognition that without God, we are nothing, literally nothing. Without Him, we can do nothing. We are nothing.

And I would again look to the example of Mary and the Magnificat as the perfection of Christian humility. "My soul doth magnify the Lord. My spirit rejoiceth in God, my Savior, for He that is mighty hath magnified me, and holy is His name." He has looked on the lowliness of me, and He has lifted me up and that anything good that we do is because God is working in us. Anything bad we do, that's our fault.

And I would say it's also very closely linked to gratitude, that that is the heart attitude that we should be cultivating really constantly. We're told to pray without ceasing. And I think that just quick prayers throughout the day of gratitude obviously for the good things and also for our failures and weaknesses and brokenness and all the things... the disappointments and annoyances and all the things that make us realize I can't do this without you, God. I need you to lift me up.

Tim Muehlhoff: What do you think Michelle meant by that? I found it interesting. She said, "I don't get to hear that much in my circles in talking to abortion radical." By that, I assume she means these are people who have it all figured out. There's no wiggle room. You're wrong, I'm right. Is she interpreting humility maybe in the intellectual sense of do you have anything to learn from me when it comes to this conversation?

Julia Hejduk: Right. No, I think she is. And I think that anyone who thinks I know it all, I have nothing to learn from you, that's the opposite of humility. And yet that is often the attitude that people think you need in order to, quote, unquote "win" the war, right?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah.

Julia Hejduk: That you need to put blinders on and just stay to your beliefs, your talking points; shut out out anything that might conflict with that and just focus on the goal. The problem is people don't actually have the right goal. And I feel like that's the real problem with the abortion war and the way that is being conducted. If you think that the goal is to end abortion, that's the wrong goal.

Tim Muehlhoff: Elaborate on that.

Julia Hejduk: Well, okay-

Tim Muehlhoff: I can imagine a bunch of listeners going-

Julia Hejduk: Wait.

Tim Muehlhoff: ... "No, that is exactly the goal that we should have is to eradicate abortion."

Julia Hejduk: Right. I wrote a little article a while ago called You Can't Have a Telos of No. The telos, the Greek word for the ultimate, final goal, the ultimate purpose of something is its telos, if your telos is negative in that way, the best way to achieve any negative telos is to eliminate people. Right?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah.

Julia Hejduk: You can eliminate abortion. You can eliminate all human suffering by eliminating human life. You could put a complete end to abortion so that there would never be another abortion again by either killing everybody or sterilizing everybody. I think you need to look to the end case and say, "Well, okay, if that's your telos, then here's the best way to achieve it."

One frustration that I had, when I first... I was an advisor for Baylor's pro-life group, Baylors for Life, for several years. And as part of that, I went to a conference. And I don't want to be too specific here, but let's just say a conference somewhere in the state of Texas. And the people with a certain pro-life organization were talking about their goal, the goal of their organization. Okay, and they had these three criteria for whether a strategy was good. The questions they asked were, "Will it save babies? Will it get the conversation going in the right direction?" And the third and final one, which was the crowning one, "Will it help to overturn Roe v. Wade?" And my heart just sank because if that's the goal, well, you know what? That goal was accomplished three years and two days ago. And where are we now?

Most states have enacted more permissive abortion laws than before. The abortion rate has either remained steady or gone up slightly. The proportion of chemical abortions has vastly increased. We've accelerated the transition to the more convenient technology that was happening anyway. And our politics, our whole political climate is even more acrimonious and polarized than ever before. Is that a win?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah.

Julia Hejduk: I don't see that as a win. I want to ask the question, well, what would a win look like? A win would look like... What I think the actual telos should be is for every person to know how deeply loved they are by God. As Henry Nouwen said, "Being the beloved expresses the core truth of our existence." I think that that is the ultimate goal. As John says in his letters, "Beloved. Love one another." It's through knowing our own belovedness that we are able to love. And from the pro-life perspective, I would say to recognize that our belovedness did not begin at birth, our belovedness began the moment we were conceived, or maybe even before. "Before I formed you in the womb. I knew you." That is the goal.

Tim Muehlhoff: Maybe the beginning of the heart attitude, before we wade into these conflicts, maybe it's a deep reflection on how much we're loved.

Julia Hejduk: Absolutely. I think that is the most important thing is to know how deeply we are loved. And without that, I just feel like nothing that we do as Christians is really going to be that effective.

Tim Muehlhoff: And then think not only does God love me, He loves everyone.

Julia Hejduk: Exactly.

Tim Muehlhoff: Everyone.

Julia Hejduk: Right.

Tim Muehlhoff: That's why Paul says, "Love your enemies-"

Julia Hejduk: Love your enemies.

Tim Muehlhoff: ... "with the love that you have been given by God." That might be the first place to start before we start getting all of our arguments written down, ready to go.

Julia Hejduk: Ask the question do I really believe in my own belovedness? And if not, why not?

Tim Muehlhoff: That's really good. Anything that you do spiritual practice-wise? We mentioned praying to Mary, but is there other things that you do that just remind you on a regular basis that you are the beloved?

Julia Hejduk: I do all kinds of things.

Tim Muehlhoff: Good, good.

Julia Hejduk: That's the goal. I read the-

Tim Muehlhoff: But what would be some-

Julia Hejduk: I begin every day with prayer and devotion and reading the Bible. I go to mass every day if I can and just sitting in the gaze of Jesus there. I try to just tell Him just periodically, "I thank you. I praise you. I love you. I trust you." Just little target prayers like that. And I'm just blessed to have people in my life that helped me to know how loved I am.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, one of the contributors to this project has us imagine God smiling at us. I think that's so powerful.

Julia Hejduk: That's so powerful. And again, as I said in the previous podcast, also imagine Mary holding her baby in her arms and the look of love that she gave Him. That's how God looks at you, and that's how God looks at me and how He looks at every person.

Tim Muehlhoff: That's so good. That's so good. Many people today simply choose not to bring up the thorny issue of abortion with a family member or a co-worker who might hold a very different stance. What advice would you give to a person, both heart preparation and communication tips, who wants to start a potentially volatile conversation? What's the opening after I think that my heart's in the right place? What would be the opening line of the communication? I'm going to try to start this conversation. What might be the opening that we could present to a person, even in something as potentially volatile as the abortion issue?

Julia Hejduk: Yeah, that's a really hard question. And I will say that I almost never bring it up.

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, really?

Julia Hejduk: Yeah. If someone else brings it up, then I will respond. But I don't know, somehow it just needs to emerge in the course of friendship or conversation. Every now and then, I'll drop a little hint or I'll... I don't feel like I have a good answer for that question. I think it is very hard to bring it up in a way... I guess one of the ways that I bring it up is just by my writing. I've written stuff about this, and so people come to me.

Tim Muehlhoff: And those writings follow you. I'm thinking of a person who blogs or a person who offers a comment in the comment section. We need to know those words follow us. It's really hard after you've been caustic in a blog or in a comment after listening to a podcast, then to recover from that if people are aware of that. I think our words need to be seasoned in every avenue of communication. There needs to be this speak love and truth.

Julia Hejduk: Absolutely. And I think one of the reasons we are so polarized is because people have completely different rules for online communication. People say things online they would never say to me in person or to you in person or anyone in person. And these things travel practically at the speed of light, right?

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, yeah.

Julia Hejduk: It gets retweeted. And of course it's the worst things, the most caustic and cutting and biting and sarcastic things that get passed on, it's not the reasoned, moderate discourse that gets retweeted.

Tim Muehlhoff: What I love about this conversation you had with Michelle is we get a little bit of a peek into what Goffman calls the backstage. These are conversations we have with ourselves. And she actually gives you a little bit of her backstage. I thought this was so fascinating when she said this. She said, "For a long time in between calls with Julia." That's really interesting. What's the self-talk after the conversation's over? How is that person playing that conversation as they mull it over? "I would become convinced that she was trying to convert me, and I would dread the next call because I would be afraid that what would happen when we started to talk would be that she would reveal herself to be a person who needed me to adopt her worldview in order for us to continue talking." That's an interesting thought is if I ultimately don't agree with your position, the friendship's over? Our conversations will stop if I don't ultimately come to your way of thinking.

Julia Hejduk: I will take some blame for that, that there certainly have been times in our friendship when it was very hard for me to resist just wanting so much for her to come to my belief. First of all, let's talk a little bit about the word convert. And she's a faithful Jew I should mention also. This is another huge point of convergence for us. For a Jew to be converted by a Christian, talk about just traumatic, painful understory to that. To force or deceive somebody into assenting something that's inimical to their happiness, that's what she hears with the word convert. And I think that that's what a lot of people also hear with the word convert. Again, it's not just what you believe, but it's why you believe. What I want, insofar as I want people to be, quote, unquote, "converted..." Which by the way is not something a person can do, it is always the work of the Holy Spirit. All I want, I just want people to know how beloved they are and always have been. That's it, that's the whole thing.

Tim Muehlhoff: And I think this brings up something we call perception checking. Because it is like how Michelle would hear the word convert. It is so good to stop the conversation every once in a while and say, "Okay, can you help me understand what you're hearing me say in this conversation?" I think that works.

Sometimes I think we make the abortion issue impossible because we forget all the simple communication lessons we've learned in marriage, parenting. It's really good with a child to stop and say, "Okay, now what do you think Dad just said? Give me your insight." "Well, you think that I'm a failure and you..." And it's like, "Okay, whoa, hold on." But perception checking is actually really powerful to say, "Help me understand how I'm coming across," and then listen to what the person has to say, and then we can course correct a little bit.

Julia Hejduk: Right. And the thing is with this conversation with Michelle, in a way, the point of it was to be able to... What can we accomplish that's positive and good and a social good and a good for other people even without either of us changing our views at all? And again, I think that it's so important to realize that there's actually a lot of common ground if you ask the right questions.

Tim Muehlhoff: Right. I love what you say about her. And this is so rare in today's argument culture, the way you're speaking about a woman that you may fundamentally disagree with when it comes to certain aspects of abortion. But this is how you describe her position. And again, this is referring back to her Judaism. You said, "It's philosophically robust and it's even psychologically plausible, and it's grounded in a faith tradition." Boy, that's really charitable. I think we don't get that often today, a charitable take on a person that we disagree with. That's a hard attitude of saying, "I'm going to speak about you in very charitable ways that I actually think is true about you." That's pretty powerful.

Julia Hejduk: Well, and it helps if you're actually friends with the person. The thing is that this conversation we had in October, that was after months of weekly or more than weekly phone conversations. This was before Zoom was even a thing. But what we would do is we would put our headphones on with our iPhones and take a walk together, she in Palo Alto and I in Waco. And we would walk and talk. And a lot of the stuff that we were talking about was, yes, of course we would talk about the issue, but a lot of it is just about ourselves and our lives and our families and all the things that... The stuff been reading and whatever, all the things that you talk about with any friend.

Tim Muehlhoff: What a great communication principle. We know there's two different kinds of communication. One is what we call emphatic. This is me. I'm going right to the heart of the issue. I'm pounding the table with my beliefs. But there's also this wonderful aspect of communication called phatic communication, which is the common, ordinary side jokes. I can imagine you walking with Michelle talking and saying, "A chipmunk just ran by. I hate chipmunks." Or something like, "Oh, okay. What?" But it lets the steam off. It's like we're human beings, and, "You hate chipmunks too?" "Yeah, I actually hate chipmunks." That kind of stuff is gold. And we've lost that today. We don't have phatic communication anymore, it's always emphatic being played out on social media. But to cultivate Julie and I loved Pizza. We'd go to this place called Peppers in downtown Chapel Hill, and we would just, "Can we just pause real quick and say how great the crust is?" You know what I mean?

Julia Hejduk: Right.

Tim Muehlhoff: Those are golden moments.

Julia Hejduk: Or send a little photo of the funny bird that we saw or whatever. And what I loved about... Well, loved and love still about Michelle and our relationship is that we could go in and out of level one, level two, level three conversation. In our very first conversation, we're talking about things that are just really intimate, important things about who we are and what we believe. And honestly, I really like that kind of conversation. I really like having significant conversations with people. But as you say, that can't be all it is. It's exhausting.

Tim Muehlhoff: It can't be all it is. Yeah.

Julia Hejduk: As with any friendship, there's just different levels of things that you're talking about, different ways of interacting. I've just learned so much from her, so much wisdom from the Jewish tradition. When I visited her, I got to... After this conversation, I stayed at her house and we got to share... She invited me into her home to share a Shabbat meal, which was amazing. Over COVID, I did a virtual Seder with her family, which was incredible.

Tim Muehlhoff: That's so great.

Julia Hejduk: And I feel like I've just learned so much about her and about the Jewish roots of my own faith and so on. There's been that whole aspect to it as well.

Tim Muehlhoff: That's really good, that I've learned from you. When I was applying to the program at UNC Chapel Hill, the head of the department... By the way, I had to get my transcripts, which were from seminary. They knew I was on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ because they asked about an employer. I'll never forget the head of the department looking at me and just saying, "Tim, why are you here? Why are you here?"

Julia Hejduk: Why are you here?

Tim Muehlhoff: "Are you here to convert us or you're here to learn?" I will never forget him asking that.

Julia Hejduk: What did you say?

Tim Muehlhoff: I said, "Convert you." No, I'm kidding. I said, "I'm here to learn. I honestly fascinated by communication, and I want to learn more about it, and I think you are the people to teach me." And he was like, "Okay."

Julia Hejduk: All right.

Tim Muehlhoff: "Let's do it."

Julia Hejduk: That's great.

Tim Muehlhoff: Can we learn from people? I think the Book of Proverbs has many contributors to the Book of Proverbs who are outside the Jewish tradition.

Julia Hejduk: Of course.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yes. Okay, let's end with this. I thought this was really interesting to move away from the conversation with Michelle, because you've actually written quite a bit. There was an essay entitled A Medicinal Warning for My Pro-Life Friends. And in it, you warn us about something you call heart attitude of judgmentalism. I think that's really interesting. And you actually describe judgmentalism as being poisonous. Can you unpack that a little bit for us?

Julia Hejduk: Sure. How do you feel when someone is judging you? Does it make you feel, oh, maybe they're right, I should change myself? Or does it make you just react with anger and defensiveness and wanting to attack that person? Jesus says, "Do not judge other people or you will be judged." And I always used to interpret that as I'll be judged by God if I do. Well, no, you'll be judged by them.

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh. Yeah.

Julia Hejduk: If you judge other people, they will judge you. And it's awful.

Tim Muehlhoff: Okay, but do we not judge people based on what the scriptures say? Can we not make moral pronouncements against people? And is making a moral pronouncement not a type of judging?

Julia Hejduk: We cannot make moral pronouncements against people. We can certainly and must as a Christian Church make pronouncements about behaviors. Look at the 10 Commandments, right?

Tim Muehlhoff: Mm-hmm.

Julia Hejduk: It's all saying, "These are the behaviors that thou shalt not do." But that's completely different from judging a person. It's interesting, another of the things in this High Conflict book that we were talking about on the previous something called the idiot driver reflex. Have you heard of this?

Tim Muehlhoff: No, I have not.

Julia Hejduk: You might call it the fundamental attribution error.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, I've heard of the fundamental. Yeah.

Julia Hejduk: Okay. Right. But if I drive through a red light or a stop sign, it's because I couldn't sleep last night because this terrible thing happened and I-

Tim Muehlhoff: The kids kept me awake.

Julia Hejduk: And, yeah, there's been this... Et cetera. We know all the things that went into our going through that, but if another person drives through that stop sign, "Oh, what an idiot. They're so selfish."

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah. You don't care about stop signs.

Julia Hejduk: Right. Exactly.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah. Oh, that's really good, yeah.

Julia Hejduk: And so we don't know at all what any person's... Again, the understory, I love that term, the understory. You push somebody's button about somewhat... And I say, "Oh, fasten your seatbelt," and somebody reacts in anger or whatever, well, there's an understory there, right?

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah.

Julia Hejduk: There's some trauma, some woundedness, some who knows what. Which we would know if it were us, but we don't know if it's them. And we never know really the full story of why people do what they do. And look how Jesus reacts to how He treats the woman at the well, or Matthew, the tax collector, or the woman caught in adultery. He looks at them with a gaze of pure love. I love what the woman at the well says, "Here's the man who told me everything I ever did," just that complete understanding that He, as God, can give us. That's what we're supposed to try to be channeling. We are not supposed to be throwing stones, we are supposed to be saying, "With Jesus, neither do I condemn you."

Tim Muehlhoff: There's a Henry Wadsworth quote that I love. He said, "If we knew the secret history of our enemies, it would most likely produce compassion." Because we don't know the weight they're under.

Julia Hejduk: We have no idea.

Tim Muehlhoff: A heart attitude could be I want to hear about the weight. As much as you're willing to tell me, I want to hear about what are the things that are happening? A Harvard Negotiation Project says in one of their books, "People's lives are much harder than you think. And to find out the hardness, the difficulties could be really powerful."

Julia Hejduk: Or as St. John Vianney, who's often heard... Spent hours and hours listening to people's confessions. Somebody asked him what he had learned about people, and he just said, "People are much sadder than they seem."

Tim Muehlhoff: Wow. Wow. Well, this is probably a sobering but good place to stop. And we know there's a loneliness epidemic inflicting the United States today. People are living lonely lives. The Atlantic did a whole cover story on this. And I thought it was really powerful to think that person might be really lonely that you're talking to about this issue. Hey, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Julia Hejduk: Thank you so much for having me. It's been a delight.

Tim Muehlhoff: Wow. If you've enjoyed what you've heard, please give us a like. And please go to WinsomeConviction.com. You can check out all of our archives. Dr. Hejduk, we have a conversation that you can go back and listen to. Tell your friends about us. We don't take your listening for granted nor your support. Thank you.