Then, the world watched as officer Derek Chauvin kneeled in George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, despite Floyd telling him several times that he could not breath.  Unlike the fight over toilet paper in Australia, no one intervened, not even one of the other three officers who were present, and Floyd died.

George Floyd’s death ushered in the second wave of life changing events. Nationwide protests, including rioting and looting, at least 114 Confederate monuments were removed from public places and it seemed as if the entire world agreed that “black lives matter”. How could we not after watching that video? Then, less than three weeks after Floyd’s death, officer Garrett Rolfe shot and killed Rayshard Brooks after a forty-one-minute verbal exchange. Again, I shook my head as I watched things unfold, but this time, what was ‘right’ was obvious to everyone—or so I thought.

An already deeply divided country, enduring COVID-19 now had to navigate social unrest, that at times became violent. The divide widened when insensitive comments made privately by several religious and business leaders were made public. In response, their businesses were boycotted, a few of them resigned and parishioners left churches in droves. Then, coworkers, neighbors, and ‘friends’, started to publicly weigh-in on what and who they agreed with, making the divide feel more personal.

[Oh how I wish finding toilet tissue was still my biggest challenge ( sad face).]

            Learning what people really think and believe about issues I thought we agreed on has been very jarring but it has also compelled me to consider the importance of knowing who I agree with and where we agree, an idea I have coined as unbiased explicit agreement.  Unbiased explicit agreement is impartial understanding that has been clearly expressed, and it counters consensus bias.  Consensus Bias, also known as false consensus effect, is “the tendency to overestimate the degree to which others share your thoughts, attributes, and beliefs” (Geher, Ph.D, 2016).  Although it is common to misjudge how much others agree with us, it can also be risky.  Political tension, COVID-19 and social unrest exposed that for me this year.

            I have several circles of friends and those closest to me have been in my life for at least the last ten years.  These are people I have walked closely with through life and I know we agree (at least about things that matter most like truth, righteousness, and justice) by how we do life together.  But what about other important relationships that are not as intimate, like coworkers and fellow church-goers?  How am I to know where we agree?  How do you know with whom and where you ‘truly’ agree?