I love my Composition 101 students. But my class session with them this past week was a tough one. That’s because I was trying to help them discover how to write an argument paper in a counterintuitive way.

Not as a soapbox to shout from or boxing match to win in one round, but as a chance to see both/all sides of an issue and learn about the roots beneath all the different thinkers holding their thoughts.

This is what a colleague recently labeled as using “dignified dialogue” — bringing more beneficial results without so much emotionally-fueled fire to burn down relationships, communities, and nations.

But this challenges my students for several reasons. For one thing, it goes against the way many of them were taught to think and write in high school. For another, it’s hard to see different and more varied gradations in the “same old” sides we have so often heard to various hot button arguments. Additionally, and perhaps most crucially in my mind, many people never learn how to consider the root issues behind different types of arguments, the source of what drives people to say what they say or feel as passionately as they feel, especially when we meet someone from an “enemy” camp.

Ironic: how right around the time of that lesson, a certain ban was passed by Alabama’s state government. (I am glad I left my phone in my office while teaching that evening because my text inbox and social media account were exploding in connection.)

I don’t usually use this space to discuss politics, and I will not go on a rant now. I do have my own strongly held beliefs on the subjects of life, choice, mothers, and babies. These have changed slightly over the course of my life, given much thought, observation, and experience, but I still hold them near and dear, without apology.

Yet, to stick to my point, as I read countless responses from friends and friends’ friends on all sides of the ban and the greater issue, all I can see are the tops of the roots: fear, anger, defensiveness, bitterness, accusations, pain. I say these are the tops of the roots, because I know these things stem from something even deeper in the hearts of the writers and the ranters.

All I can think is: what brought this person or that person to this point? Why is he so angry? Why is she so afraid? Why can’t they (on any “side”) see the fear, anger, pride, or pain of someone from another side and have enough compassion to handle their roots with care?

This is, in part, what I am helping my comp students learn how to do. I am not yet a master at it, and sometimes the arguements I meet in daily life are so volatile, I must walk away from them in silence for the sake of my own wellbeing.

But remember that experience I mentioned a moment ago? I know what is to have my own pain, anger, hatred, confusion, bitterness, and fear plainly seen by the Master Teacher-Gardener (One who was also a Master of dignified dialogue). And I know what it is to have Him uncover, clean, and prune my roots with great tenderness.

When I have been seen thusly and come out the better for it, I find I must, for my part, follow His example to approach those around me and seek to be both dignified and compassionate in all my communication with them.