As I write this, about two days ago, towards the beginning of the Feast of Tabernacles here in Taupo, New Zealand, my family and I were present at a lunch that was hosted by the minister and his wife who currently oversee New Zealand for our church, who my mother as known since they were both teenagers in the 1970s. It should be noted that while the minister and his wife (and mother, who is staying with them) were not a part of the conversation, quite a few local brethren were, one of them, a man whom I have known online for a couple of decades or more but had never met in person, directing a series of pointed questions at those of us who were clearly of different political candidates.

It is not my intention to re-argue or rehash the discussion that we had, which was friendly but definitely pointed with regards to a series of questions and comments that showed a stark divide between the gentleman and the rest of us at the table. At the basis of it all was that the other person kept on bringing up sources that were pretty ridiculous–one time he used a Salon article to try to argue that Trump was having low attendance relative to Harris in Wisconsin rallies, and at no time did the person who was pro-Harris present any sources that would have been acceptable as the basis of conversation or agreement. Needless to say, the fellow was completely hostile to Fox News, Newsmax, or any news sources that we would read or view that were not of a left-of-center lamestream legacy media nature. I wondered aloud if he would quote the Huffington Post or the Atlantic or the Washington Post after he kept on showing the usual sources as if they were credible ones.

This presents an obvious problem, one that applies in many ways to many discussions. We cannot even have a conversation with others about subjects unless we have something in common to appeal to as an authority that both of us recognize. As someone who speaks regularly in a religious environment, I am aware that with the people I speak with in that environment, there are a lot of common authorities we are assumed to have. These would include not only the Bible but a particular tradition of interpreting it, articles and booklets and books and nearly a century of articles and other materials that have developed this common approach to scripture, complete with an in-speak jargon that allows us to speak about some subjects in shorthand. This is not to say that everything is nailed down or agreed to within these parameters. To give but one example, which also occurred at the conversation, another gentleman commented on his belief that the effort of Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38-39) to attack Israel was a pre-tribulation matter, while others believe it would be immediately after the establishment of Jesus Christ’s millennial kingdom but before it has been consolidated throughout the world. These differences, though, are understood within a common belief that the Bible and its predictive prophesies will hold and that we understand a substantial amount of information about the prophecy or passage in question, just disagree about a few details like the timing.

What does one do, though, in the absence of such authorities? What do we do when we cannot agree whether or not a candidate who is slightly right-of-center is or is not a fascist, or whether his opponent has an IQ that is equal or lesser to rocks and potted plants or is very intelligent and can run circles around him intellectually. One would think that one could believe one’s eyes and ears, but there are filters attached to what we see that affect the way we interpret a penchant for word salads as being the result of ignorance and empty-headedness or some sort of profound and eloquent reasoning. It is a struggle to figure out how to reach people who have different or even hostile authorities in mind, as it seems hard to come to an ability to come to agreement until one does preparatory work to build the ground of common authority that would allow for such an agreement to (eventually) happen. How is this groundwork to be laid, though?