Persuade your enemies – or crush them?

I only have so much mental energy, and I only have so much time. It makes sense for me to allocate my time and mental energy to tasks that are likely to succeed and are valuable.

Here is a belief that is core to my worldview–that we can use evidence to build a better world, and we can use that evidence to convince people to change their beliefs, when warranted.

There is a clear tension between those two things, once you factor in how much time and engagement it takes to try to convince someone–just think about the last time you and your dad argued about whether Fannie and Freddie caused the housing crisis. Then factor in the evidence that people become even more convinced of their beliefs when confronted with contrary evidence (see Brenden Nyhan with a great summary  here ), and the purpose of all this arguing becomes questionable.

And then I think about my goal. I want to change people’s minds so that they do something–in my case, have my dad believe something about the cause of the financial crisis so that he votes/advocates for different policies than he would have without our conversation. If that’s the outcome I care about, though, couldn’t I just find someone who shares my emotional worldview (without the evidence) and then convince them to be mobilized?

Let me give you an example. When my wife and I were new to Philly, we got minorly involved with an organization that advocated for clean water policies. When I went to canvass, the organizers would tell us our goal, and I would grill them about the evidence base. Why is coal bad? What, specifically, does pollution do to your lungs? My questions made me an ineffective mobilizer, because I took more time and resources from them, and it probably didn’t make me a more effective canvasser. They would have done better with someone who had an emotional, not rational, reaction to the idea of pollution and then got others who also shared that emotional worldview fired up while canvassing.

In thinking about convincing people, I am like the organizers. Why should I try to convince my dad with evidence, when I could find someone who will agree with me based on their emotional worldview and try to get them to take action. It would take less effort and be more effective?

Isn’t it more rational to mobilize those who already agree with you, or whose emotional disposition leads them to agree with you? The conclusion seems inescapable, but it’s also deeply depressing.

The way out is to change your view of the relationship between mobilizing and arguing–that engaging with others, especially those who disagree with you or have different emotional dispositions, is good in itself. That I shouldn’t view that argument with my dad as a chance to change his mind, but rather as a chance to understand him better, and, indeed, to understand myself better. In this view, persuading your intellectual enemies isn’t the opposite of mobilizing your intellectual friends. The two have different goals–one for personal and interpersonal growth, and the other to change the world to be better. Both goals are worthy of pursuit, but confusing engaging your intellectual enemies with trying to change to world will only lead to resentment and confusion.

Christians, You Don’t Sound Like Jesus

Ever since Phil Robertson lit up the internet with his comments about homosexuality and up through the recent furor over the passage and veto of the Arizona “anti-gay” bill, I’ve read a lot from Christians about these issues. I’ve read a lot about Constitutional rights (sometimes well applied, sometimes less so). I’ve read a lot about freedom of religion. I’ve read good arguments from people whose rhetorical style I detest (see Matt Walsh) about how the Arizona bill and the court cases that prompted it (i.e. Hobby Lobby et al) issue has been grossly mischaracterized by the media and the culture and glosses over real oppression of Christians who do not want to participate in an action they find morally wrong (but who, tellingly, would serve gay people for any other service).

But there’s a perspective I haven’t seen, and it’s absence is troubling. It’s Jesus’ perspective (taken from Matthew 5):

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. 

I’m not sure if Jesus could be clearer. This isn’t one of those “you really have to understand Jewish culture blah blah blah to get what he’s saying” situations. If someone is oppressing you, you (follower of Jesus) ought to do more than they wanted in the first place. If someone sues you for your shirt, give him your (more valuable) cloak. If someone insults you, let them insult you more!

Those are beautiful, terrifying words. They’re impossible. Jesus spends zero time talking about religious liberty to a world of Jews aching for relief from heavy Roman rule. He spends zero time agitating against the (very real) oppression of the Jews. Instead, he tells his followers that if a Roman soldier demands that he walk a mile and carry the soldier’s heavy pack, he should carry it two miles!

Jesus did not say: “If the government impinges on your religious liberty, sue it!”

 

Jesus again:

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

I have not read any Christians rejoicing over their suffering at the hands of the government and the culture. I have not read Christians exhorting other Christians to rejoice in their suffering and oppression.

Back to Jesus. What did his first followers have to say (from Acts 5)?

They [the Jewish leaders at the Sanhedrin] called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.

The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.

These guys were whipped, after being told not to talk about Jesus. In other words, the quasi-government at the time had these men physically beaten and told that they can’t talk about Jesus anymore. Was the apostles’ response to make convincing legal arguments for why they shouldn’t be beaten? Nope–they sang songs and thanked Jesus for the chance to be oppressed for him.

One of those guys later wrote a letter (1 Peter), where he said:

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.

I don’t think I need to summarize or explain Peter’s point. But I don’t get it: why are no Christians saying this? Why hasn’t my Facebook feed blown up with Christians who are telling the other Christians who being oppressed to rejoice?

Instead, my Facebook feed is full of links about religious liberty, about how Christians are being oppressed in this country, and how the government (& the gay lobby) is attacking Christians. Maybe those things are true.

But Christians, let me ask you, when you read the Bible, do you see anything that looks like what you’re doing right now? Are there examples of apostles “standing up for their rights?” And then ask yourself, do the Bible’s many examples of people rejoicing over suffering and oppression look even a little bit like your life? Rejoicing under suffering is a big deal to Jesus, and it was a big deal to his early followers. Why doesn’t it seem to matter to you today, American Christian?

I’d love to hear from you (comment, e-mail, facebook, twitter).

Postscript: My claim that I haven’t read anything about Jesus and the second mile isn’t entirely true.  Rachel Held Evans says pretty much everything I want to say here, but I’m going to say it anyway in hopes that a few more Christians might read it and think about it.

The Inevitable Insanity of People of the Book

Today I want to be controversial. Well, I don’t want to be (OK, maybe a little), but there’s something bubbling in my head that I want to write down. First, this is speculative, in that I have no hard data or study to show you, but it comports with my experience in several arenas, so I’m willing to share it as plausible.

You should expect people of the book to come to insane conclusions. Not always, but  consistently (hence why you can expect it). I’m going to give you three examples, two general and one specific (that might make people mad).

1. When I was in my senior year in high school, we studied Vergil’s epic poem The Aeneid. It is truly a wonderful work of art (though I’m sad to say most of it gets lost in translation, as is the way of most poetry). At times we came across a line that seemed half finished (that was missing a few syllables) or that did not make sense grammatically. When we ragamuffin students pointed out the mistake (or, more likely, have it pointed out to us), our teacher was always at pains to say that Vergil was correct–that he really meant to leave the line half-finished, or to use a grammatical structure that was not correct. She would not entertain the thought that Vergil had made a mistake. Why? Is it inconceivable that the great poet made a mistake somewhere in his voluminous narrative of Aeneas and his odyssey to Rome?

2. In my modern philosophy class, we read parts of the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s transcendental argument (if you don’t know know what it is, don’t ask). It’s a brilliant, sometimes incomprehensible argument, of which we nicked the surface. But my professor (also brilliant) would point out problems with the argument, or very difficult passages to interpret in light of other passages. Did she say “well, at least one of these passages is false?” No. She (and the philosophers who described Kant’s arguments) all started from a presupposition that everything Kant said was right, and then they attempted to reconcile the (sometimes crazy) things he said.

3. John Piper has argued extensively that divorce is a sin in all cases (including where adultery is involved). He admits to be in the minority of Christians. When he reads passages like in Matthew 5, “But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery,” he concludes that the Bible says that divorce is a sin, even in cases of sexual immorality. Why would Piper, a smart guy who cares about the words in the Bible, conclude this? He has reasons. They are convoluted; they make a lot of sense when he tells you. I remember listening to a series where he went through his argument in detail, and thinking “well, that makes sense.”

I think that’s the problem. Note that these three examples are not at all the same exact phenomenon (#2 mostly represents what philosophers call the principle of charity, where  you try to do you best to represent a given argument and give its less appealing parts the best shot you can at explaining how they might make sense, vs. #3, which is a controversial interpretation by an eminent thinking man’s pastor). But I think they all stem from the same mentality–the attitude of being a person of the book. What I mean is this: people of the book do not question the book–whatever text it is–if you’re a Kantian philosopher, it’s Kant; if you’re a Christian, it’s the Bible. Mostly, that’s great! In the philosopher’s case, you use the principle of charity wrestle with what the obtuse German philosopher really meant. If you’re a Christian, it causes you to wrestle with all the parts of the Bible, and not just gloss over the parts you don’t like.

But! If you’re going to take this mentality, with its attendant benefits, you should think about the costs too. A person of the book is bound to come to an insane conclusion from time to time. By “insane,” I mean, a conclusion that any non-initiated but sympathetic person would say “that is crazy! How could you come to that conclusion?” Piper’s conclusion strikes me as a paradigmatic example. He, an ideal person of the book, has spent so long with the book and with other people of the book, that a patently absurd conclusion seems reasonable, nay, inevitable.

Should you be a person of the book? Maybe–I would even say, probably. If you become one, though, try use what I’ll call the “principle of a charitable interpreter” and take a step back from time to time. Ask yourself if there’s anything that you believe that would sound insane to someone who is a beginner person of the book. If there is, you might want to examine that belief very critically.

 

 

Peter Singer is Wrong about Dying Kids in Africa

Well folks, I went dark for a while. Between Thanksgiving and now were wonderful holidays, and now that the semester has begun in earnest, my wife is back to reading her eyes out. Which means more blog posts for your enjoyment.

Back as a fresh philosopher in my first year of college, I encountered a moral argument by the controversial ethicist Peter Singer about giving money to aid organizations. Singer’s argument is short, appears to rest upon unshakable premises, and has the force of our moral intuition behind it. Which is to say, I was always uncomfortable with it.

His (damning) argument is this (taken from pages 15 and 16 of his book, The Life You Can Save):

First premise: Suffering and death from the lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad.

Second premise: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so.

Third premise: By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important.

Conclusion: Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong.

(P. 15-16)

The first premise is basically unassailable. Premise 2 is also tough to argue with. Singer doesn’t believe that you should, as he points out elsewhere in the book “neglect your children” to feed children far away. The scenario he has in mind is one where someone uses money to purchase luxuries, or even things that just make life comfortable. Premise 2 is ironclad.

The third and final premise also appears to be solid. Even if the marginal dollar does not save a person from starving or dying, the average effect of your giving will be to prevent at least one person from starving or dying. By accepting the three premises are true,we are left in the uncomfortable situation of accepting Singer’s conclusion as sound. The problem is that you and I don’t live the way Singer’s argument demands we ought to.

I ordered dinner tonight, which cost about $20. We had the food in the house to make dinner. Why should I not have taken that money and donated it to a charity like Save the Children, or Oxfam? Why not donate it to the Red Cross? Suddenly the coffee I buy at work every day (sometimes twice) looks, well, evil. Should I move to a house that costs less money and donate the difference?

The questions, and their associated guilt, do not stop once you start this path of reasoning.

But this post is called “Peter Singer is Wrong,” so I ought to get to that. Singer’s argument (specifically, Premise 3) and his analogies assume certainty about the instruments that do the saving from starvation and death (I did not explain his analogies, but they run along the lines of the following: you’re walking to work in an expensive suit; you see a kid drowning in a small pool; you could rescue the kid, but then you’d sully your suit; ought you save the kid? The answer is clearly yes, and Singer thinks it’s because of his argument above).

In my life, I don’t know how much good much (if any) of my donations do. I’m not there when people who are starving following a disaster get aid, or when someone living on two dollars a day gets medical care I paid for. It’s not even necessary for the aid to be malignantly co-opted by a warlord for the uncertainty problem to kick in. I have to weight my decisions by the certainty I have in the efficacy of the instruments that bring about an effect. I’m deeply uncertain about how targeted the aid money is, and therefore, my moral blameworthiness is diminished. I shouldn’t feel as guilty about not helping people in need I can’t see, in part because I don’t know how well the thing that supposed to help them (the aid) actually works.

In fairness, Singer addresses this problem in his book to a degree. He admits that uncertainty of the effect of the funds given is real, but he doesn’t wrestle with the implications (see pages 13 and 14). Mostly, he presents another thought experiment that introduces some uncertainty and then notes that most people think that the person in the example still ought to help. What he does not do, however, is incorporate uncertainty into his core philosophical argument.

This is a significant oversight on Singer’s part, but don’t go out and buy that new iPhone just yet. Introducing uncertainty means that part of our goal, if we believe Singer’s argument, is to minimize our own ignorance in order to increase our ability to save people from starving and dying. In other words, don’t say “We can’t really know what works;” go out and look up what works! There are studies and randomized trials and reports on what works. We can reduce our level of uncertainty in the instruments, which is at the same time great (we can help people!) and terrifying (remember that guilt I mentioned?). Here are some concrete steps you can take:

1. Read the annual reports of organizations you’ve heard of. Look at what they’re doing, not necessarily their administrative ratios (those can be gamed very easily).

2. Read authors who think carefully about economic development and aid (Chris Blattman is a great place to start).

3. Check out the work that the JPAL and IPA are doing (they conduct randomized controlled trials on various poverty alleviation instruments with an eye on scaling the projects up to much larger levels. You can also find their policy briefs, which summarize their findings, so you don’t have to read each paper).

4. Go to Givewell; this website evaluates hundreds of charities and picks a few that they think are doing something that will radically change the lives of the recipients and that is currently in need of much more funding.

5. Give! Don’t let the enemy be the perfect of the good. Singer’s argument has the negative effect of making you feel like you’d never measure up, so why try? I say, try, and see how far you can get.

I am writing this post to myself. Singer’s argument, even adjusted for uncertainty, is still searing. We affluent Americans are immoral by not devoting the time to know what would help starving and dying people and then devoting resources to help them.

Singer is wrong, but so are you. Join me in heading over the Givewell and doing something about it.

On Medicaid Cost-Sharing: Or, How You Can be Right and Still Wrong

Harold Pollack has a great piece at the Wonkblog about certain Republican proposals for Medicaid reform (for those who need a refresher, Medicaid is the U.S. government program that provides health insurance to very low income individuals).

Pollack cites conservative pundit Ross Douthat, who makes the following point:

[C]omprehensive health insurance is, at its heart, a deeply wasteful use of resources: Modern people, and especially modern Americans, are much more likely to overconsume health care than to underconsume it…

Douthat’s idea isn’t that there should be no government dollars going toward healthcare for the poor and elderly. Instead, he thinks that, since the marginal person consumes too much healthcare, then we should reform Medicaid (and Medicare) to shift away from a comprehensive, defined benefit insurance plan to something to help those who have medical catastrophes but not provide “comprehensive” care–I am guessing that would include most preventative and routine healthcare. He wants a government program that does not encourage healthcare over-consumption at the margin.

You’ll notice that I emphasized at the margin. The concept of margin analysis is one of the most insightful in the field of economics. You can think of “margin” as “what you get for one more.” If you’re studying for a test, when you decide if you should study for one more hour, you think about the benefit of extra hour, that’s marginal thinking. When it comes to health policy, the question Douthat is trying to answer is, “what is the benefit of one more dollar’s worth of health insurance? Does that extra dollar encourage overconsumption of healthcare?”

It’s wonderful analysis, but for that sort of analysis to work (especially for budgetary analyses), enough people have to have enough effect “at the margin” for the change to make a difference. Pollack puts it this way:

Economic intuition suggests that Harold Pollack and Ross Douthat alike would use care more efficiently if we had more skin in the game, if we were less comprehensively insured. Sure enough, non-poor participants in the RAND Health Insurance Experiment used roughly one-third less care when they were enrolled in something akin to a catastrophic plan than did their counterparts who were enrolled in more generous plans. Despite their reduced service use, participants in the catastrophic plan also appeared, on average, to be just as healthy. Such findings provide a powerful argument for catastrophic plans.

The RAND study is a gold standard in the health policy area, and they found that people tend to use less healthcare when they have less health insurance, with no negative health impact. This outcome strongly suggests that the employer-based health insurance tax deduction is very wrong-headed (at least at its current). We as a society are subsidizing people to overconsume healthcare, and, guess what? They are overconsuming.

So, that sort of solution should work with Medicaid, too. Right? Not so fast. There isn’t that much cost savings to wring out of most Medicaid beneficiaries through cost sharing incentives (e.g., increasing the amount of money Medicaid beneficiaries pay out of pocket). How could that be? Well, similar to most health care markets, a small share of people make up the lion’s share of the cost (these are people with multiple conditions, often accompanied by other mental illness). That is very true for Medicaid. Pollack created the following graph of the cumulative cost of care by the cumulative percentage of beneficiaries for Illinois:

(source: Harold Pollack)

Pollack notes that 71% of Illinois Medicaid beneficiaries account for 10% of the total expenditures (the average was $564 per person). The top 3.2% account for more than 50% of the overall expenditures, averaging more than $30,000 per person.

What that means is, any plan to increase cost sharing will likely financially crush those in the top (i.e., those actually causing the cost problem), while not reducing overall expenditures by that much. How much will you save per beneficiary by encouraging them to spend less? There’s just not a lot of room to cut when you’re only spending $564 per person.

Of course, this is only for Illoinois. but from what I’ve seen, this is pretty representative of the nation overall. Increased cost sharing makes sense for me and for the people reading this blog. You will probably use less healthcare, without much (if any) negative health impact. If you were a Medicaid recipient, you’d save the government money (though, you would also have already cost the government way, way more than the average Medicaid beneficiary).

But the average Medicaid beneficiary doesn’t have that much room to cut, even if the incentive works and they reduce their healthcare use. There’s just not enough room at the margin from $500 to $0, and even those who are at the margin won’t give the government a large average cost savings.

Do read the Pollack piece in full.

(Some) Data on How Doctors Die

Back in 2011, there was a viral essay written by Dr. Ken Murray titled: “How Doctors Die: Not like the rest of us, but it should be.” The basic premise was that doctors often choose not be be treated when faced with life-threatening conditions that required excruciating treatment with long odds of success. Murray writes this stirring anecdote:

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds–from 5 percent to 15 percent–albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home.

Read the whole thing. 

The idea that doctors make very different decisions that result in less painful care at the end of life jived with my overall personal preferences and my overall policy view that we spend far too much money on end-of-life care that doesn’t really help the patients. It was also a snappy narrative with an elegant explanation: Doctors don’t want care that has long odds and will wreck the quality of the end of their life because they have more information than the average patient does. That information tells them that these treatments really do have long odds and that the really would make them miserable while they die in an ICU, after months of treatments with horrible side effects. So doctors tend to opt out of such care, whereas the average patient goes along with them.

The explanation is compelling but lacked data, which made me wary of giving it too much credance. I was pleased to find, then (via Matthew Herper, @Matthewherper) an article in the New York Times that filled out that anecdote with some data (and, being a news article, more anecdotes). First, another anecdote:

This spring, after Dr. McKinley’scancer found its way into her liver and lungs and the tissue surrounding her brain, she was told she had two options.

“You can put chemotherapy directly into your brain, or total brain radiation,” she recalled recently from her home in suburban Cleveland. “I’m looking at these drugs head-on and either one would change me significantly. I didn’t want that.” She also did not want to endure the side effects of radiation.

The authors of the article point to a 2003 study that surveyed doctors about whether they had issued advanced directives about how they ought to be treated at the end of their lives (for example, whether they did not want to be resuscitated if their heart gave out). 64% of the doctors had issued advanced directives, vs. about 47% of adults over 40 (taken from elsewhere by the authors of the NYT article). On the other hand, the study did find that 46% of these doctors thought their physicians weren’t aware of their end of life preferences, and 59% indicated that they didn’t intend to talk to their doctors about their end of life wishes within the next year.

The authors pointed to another, more recent study of where Medicare patients die (they examined a random 20% sample of fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries who died in 2000, 2005, and 2009). These authors found that, despite a majority of Americans wanting to die at home, only a third of those in the study actually did. This does not answer the question of whether doctors do, in fact, die differently, but it lends credibility to the information-asymmetry explanation. More people prefer to die at home, but the medical system is complex, and many individuals may not have discussed their preferences with their family.

That study wasn’t all bad news, though. Use of hospice care at death had increased from 22% in 2000 to 42% in 2009. Death in hospitals decreased from 33% to 27%. It seems like patient preferences are (slowly) changing the place (and, hopefully, the quality) of how sick Americans die.

On the other hand, the study indicated that the average Medicare patient was moved 2 times in the last 90 days of life, vs. 3 in 2009.

As typically, happens, nice stories get muddier when compared with data. However, we can conclude a few things from the data. On balance, doctors probably do die differently than the average American patient, in part due to advance planning (and that increased advanced planning likely correlates to other choices that doctors make about their end of life care that the average patient does not). And there remains a stark difference between patient preferences and their experiences at the end of life. That gap could be cut through better doctor practices (e.g., more emphasis placed on empowering patients to make choices, and not trying to “be a hero” and make the goal survival at all costs), better policies by insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid (e.g., more comprehensive reimbursement practices related to hospice care, incentivizing more hospice care vs. ICU-type care), and increased preparation at the individual level (e.g., being clear with your family, your doctor, and through documentation about what you want to happen at the end of your life).

Based on the data, we seem to be on the right track to getting patient experiences in line with their preferences when they die, but we’ve got a long way to go. Too many people are dying in hospitals, where they don’t want to be, getting treatments that make them miserable.

 

Love Believes All Things

Over at her excellent blog Wine and Marble, Hännah wrote a beautiful and disheartening piece about a destructive tendency that Christians have (at least, the ones in the background we’re both from). The habit she’s talking about is a question that Christians ask to other hurting Christians, and she shares from personal experience how painful that question can be. The question is

“Was your divorce on biblical grounds?”

Here is Hännah explaining how such a situation unfolds:

 

When I first told people what had happened, what my ex had decided, someone close to me asked me “What’s your theology of divorce?” and I was just devastated. Compassion and care and offers of support and help should have been the first response I got from this individual, not a one-line request to justify my actions (or, really, my ex’s actions).

Do read the whole thing. For this post, I want to zero in on the incongruity between this sort of behavior and something Paul had to say. Here’s Hännah again, defining the problem in more detail:

And I don’t think Christians mean to be so hurtful and oblivious–the discourse of most American Christian culture is premised on the assumption that love looks like challenging each other to be our best selves (in some way or another), instead of loving each other as if we were our best selves. The burden of hope should be placed on the possibility of being one’s best self, not on the act of achieving that possibility. It’s basic Works vs. New Identity in Christ stuff.

“Love looks like challenging.” How does that idea of what love looks like stack up to this?

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,endures all things. [Emphasis added, obviously]

When you, Christian friend, find another Christian friend who is in a tough, heartbreaking situation (including divorce), that’s not the time to talk about your friend’s theology of divorce. It’s not time to “sharpen them,” or “ask them what they’re believing about God.” It’s not time to police their beliefs or to make sure that they’re believing the right things (which in my experience means: speak the accepted doctrine in the appropriate wording). It’s not time to think they’re a lesser Christian or to judge them.

All those reactions aren’t loving–they’re the opposite. They’re checking to make sure that this person is still OK to call a brother or sister. It’s like that person needs to take a test and pass before you will affirm them. Paul is talking about something different. Paul isn’t 100% clear on what it means in practice to “believe all things,” but I think it stretches credulity to say he meant “interrogate the heartbroken.” When he says “hopes all things,” does he mean that when someone expresses doubts, it’s time for you to pounce? I think the tone of the text answers those questions. Do you, like Jesus, have compassion?