There’s been a lot of airtime given lately to the need for a higher level debate in Australian Society. The most recent that I have read is Bruce Guthrie’s article in The Age over the weekend where he claims that public debate in this country has degenerated into a tedious game of “Chinese whispers”. He says that social media is partly to blame for this problem in that it misrepresents the truth and quickly whips into a frenzy and creates a hazard along the way. With this often malicious and dumbed down version of “reporting” he claims that we ‘”get the public debate we deserve’”.

Then there is a TED Talks from 2010 that I caught up with recently. Michael Sandel, a Harvard Professor in Political Philosophy, said that “one thing this country [America] desperately needs is a better way of conducting our political debates. We need to rediscover the lost art of democratic argument’.  He refers to the arguments in American politics as ‘ideological food fights on the floor of Congress”. The same criticism must be thrown at Australian politics as well. Sandel goes on to argue that lying just below all the arguments on various issues today are big questions of moral philosophy, but they are rarely discussed.

Jim Longley, past NSW Liberal MP and present Chief Executive of NSW Ageing, Disability and Home Care, says we need to have a high level debate about what the true role of Government is in 21st Century Australia.  Lindsay Tanner (previous Federal Labor MP) agrees, arging that the role of Government is very different in this generation and that we need to be having sensible discussions about what that looks like. I heard Kevin Rudd (former Labor Prime Minister) say at a public meeting last year that the reactive style of political debate that we witness coming out of Canberra will not go away but that we also need to create space for high level discussions on the things that really matter.

Why are the big issues rarely being discussed? Guthrie has a swipe at social media and Tanner blames the 24 hour news cycle and the interplay between politician and the media, as politicians stoop to creating entertainment to get the headlines. This is a dumbing down of the whole political process and intelligent debate on the big questions of moral philosophy are not a part of that picture.

I could go on with the references and laments and suggested reasons but I won’t. You get the point I am sure.  So what? I hear you ask. Firstly, as always in this column, I ask, “What does the Bible say about that?” Because I believe that wisdom from the Judeo-Christian Scriptures has something to say into these issues.

God is portrayed in those Scriptures as a God of reason who wants to sit and listen and work things through. In Isaiah 1:18 He is pictured as inviting the wayward people of Israel to sit and reason things through with Him. The Old Testament prophets often had a similar message for the people being addressed. This is a call to high level discussion.

In Old Testament times the City Gate was a place of such discourse. In the book of Proverbs Wisdom is seen as crying out in the City Gates, longing to be heard, for she has words that will result in discernment, trust, and justice, and such words are the most valuable things that can be found (Prov. 8:1-11). When leaders sat in the City Gates and sought wisdom they were involved in the high level discourse this article is calling for. We need to return to the concepts which were foundational to the City Gates.

In many New Testament passages Jesus is seen attempting to move people beyond the superficial to deeper issues, matters that Michael Sandel would call “big questions of moral philosophy”. Some examples given to us by John the Apostle include Jesus in discussion with a religious leader named Nicodemus (John 3), then with an unnamed Samaritan woman (John 4), a large crowd of followers wanting another free feed (John 6) and a woman caught in adultery and being used as a scapegoat (John 8). Although most of these examples are conversations with individuals they are also conversations in the public space and are examples of seeking to move deeper. I think that Jesus would agree with the lament of Bruce Guthrie, Michael Sandel, Jim Longley, Lindsay Tanner, Kevin Rudd, and others when they call for us to move beyond the superficial and purely argumentative to the deeper issues of everyday life, and to do so reasonably.

This brings me to my second “so what” point. What can be done about this? Simple! Let’s start having those conversations. Let’s get together with a commitment to listen well and respectfully to all sides of the debate on the issues of the day, to present our views that they may be understood, to look for wisdom in all that is shared and to learn from one another. And then let’s take action on the wisdom we discover. We don’t ever need to be afraid of wisdom for it all comes from God no matter where it is found but we need to be discerning so it is truly wisdom that we are acting upon.

If you would like to be a part of this response to the call for intelligent discourse on the things that really matter then I’d love to hear from you.  Get in touch through this site and let’s get the conversation going.

Food for Thought.

David Wilson is the Director of the Sophia Think Tank, the Bible Society’s public theology unit.

Sophia Think Tank is hosting a series of such conversations over the next couple of months in Melbourne and Sydney.  The series is called ‘Beyond the Game: Is there a Crisis in Australian Democracy?’  More information can be found at www.st2.com.au on the ‘Hope Talks’ tab.