My father loved John Wayne movies. So, I grew up with a steady diet of the Duke. I still love those movies. I clearly remember the first John Wayne movie that I didn’t like, however. It was called “The Cowboys”. The Duke was needing some cowhands to help get his cows to market. The only available help was a bunch of teenage boys. The reason I hated this movie was that about half-way through John Wayne got killed. Not just killed, he was beaten up by a man 30 years younger than him, and then shot, even though he was unarmed. John Wayne! That’s not what’s supposed to happen in John Wayne movies. The great thing about those movies (most of them) is that the good guys are really good, and the bad guys are really bad. It’s easy to tell the difference between them, and no matter how dark things get, good wins out in the end.

I grew up liking movies that were easy to understand, black and white, with no gray areas. Bad guys were bad and good guys were good. Many of us like those sorts of books and movies. But life isn’t really like that is it?

Life is complicated, and you don’t have to look any further than the Bible to see that. When I began to read the Bible for myself as a teen, I became confused. I was looking for the good guys and bad guys I had heard about as a child, but I found that most of the people were a troubling mix of good and bad. David fearlessly followed God and was even called “a man after God’s own heart”, but David also committed adultery and then murder to cover it up. Paul wrote most of the New Testament, after a career of persecuting Christians. Peter was one of Jesus’ closest disciples but denied even knowing Jesus after he was arrested. The list could go on and on.

Even though it’s comforting to think that people are all-good or all-bad, it’s not honest. It’s easy to hop on social media and make people out to be completely wrong to further your argument, but that’s rarely the case. Acting as if the people who disagree with you are wrong about everything and have only horrible motives may score points with people who agree with you, but it destroys any chance of a relationship with people who disagree with you. The world isn’t going to change by the use of clever arguments. Only relationships can do that. Honest relationships between broken people can bring about an amazing amount of change, but for that to happen we have to be honest enough to admit that we are all a mixture of good and bad motives. We are right about some things and wrong about others. If we can remain humble and be willing to see the good in each other, we can begin to have the sort of real conversations that can make a difference.

Want a chance to grow? Take a second and find something that’s good about someone you disagree with. It may not be easy, but it’s an important first step to healthy, compassionate relationships.