Winsome Conviction
Winsome Conviction
Bridging The Divide In The Israel-Palestine Conflict
Simon Greer, a Jewish leader, social entrepreneur, and founder of Bridging the Gap, and Saad Soliman, a Muslim entrepreneur and justice reform advocate, could be enemies. A generation ago, members of their families were trying to kill each other in the Six-Day war. Simon’s uncles fought for Israel in 1967, while Saad’s uncles died fighting for Egypt in that same war. And yet, after meeting at a justice event for formerly incarcerated individuals, Simon and Saad made a choice to work together to build bridges among religious and cultural divisions surrounding the Middle East conflicts. On today’s episode, Tim speaks with Simon and Saad about the work of bridge-building, perspective-taking, and how to work together to build enough shared humanity to live together and thrive while honoring differences.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Welcome to the Winsome Conviction podcast. My name is Tim Muehlhoff. I'm a professor of communication here at Biola University in La Mirada, California. For the last five years, I've served as the co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project that seeks to open lines of communication rather than close them. We've been very concerned that, as Americans, we're losing the ability to talk, talk about really important issues.
One thing that we have discovered over the five years is that this skill of perspective-taking, the ability to step out of my own perspective, my own worldview, and enter into another person's worldview to understand how they have constructed the world or our relationship is becoming a lost skill. So what we'd like to do is to address that.
To do that, we're bringing back a guest, and then we're introducing a guest for the very first time. First, let's start with an old friend. Simon Greer is the founder of Bridging the Gap and the host of Courageous Conversations. He's known as a social entrepreneur who has spent the last 30 years on the front lines of contentious social change struggles. He lives with his wife and two children in New York City. You may remember Simon as being the person who started what we now call the Pomona Dialogues.
Years ago, Simon had a crazy idea, and the idea was let's take a conservative university and pair it with a progressive university and then teach us how to talk. We absolutely loved it, and we've been doing it. We'll be going on the fifth year of doing this next year. So we're deeply indebted to Simon Greer. A new friend is Saad Soliman, a consultant specializing in social justice and criminal justice reform. He's the founding executive director of Peers Mentoring Center.
Saad has been a keynote speaker in a variety of forums, including trainings, conferences, and summits, both at the state and federal level. But the best thing about Saad is not only is he a bridge builder, but he is bald and beautiful, and we really appreciate that here. So, gentlemen, welcome to the pinnacle of your career, the Winsome Conviction podcast.
Simon Greer:
It's good to be here, Tim.
Saad Soliman:
Thank you for having us, Tim.
Tim Muehlhoff:
It is really great to have you. I want to put a context in what we're talking about, and this is something that all three of us did after the October 7th, 2023, terrorist attack against Israel. Simon, you put together a very unique group of people that were different. We were different politically. We were different religiously, and we embarked on a 10-day trip to the region right after the terrorist attacks to engage diverse views surrounding this conflict.
And the trip offered many opportunities to engage in perspective-taking, not only between Palestinians and Israelis, but the people on the trip. We would call what we had bus time, where we had traveled to different places. And Simon, first, I want to publicly thank you for pulling that together. It was a life-changing trip. So thank you so much for doing that.
Simon Greer:
Thanks, Tim. I appreciate it.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Now, let me start this way. You both identify yourself as bridge builders. That may be a little self-evident, but maybe not for all of our listeners. So, Saad, how would you define being a bridge builder? What does that mean?
Saad Soliman:
Yeah. No. So thank you, Tim, for having us on here, and Simon, and just being a part of all this work. Bridge building for me sort of fell into my life, and that really began when I was offered an opportunity to become the first formerly incarcerated person ever hired by the United States Department of Justice. Now, working in that capacity, I was thrust in a situation where, one, this was an historic opportunity, so I had to make the most of it. But most importantly, during that work, I needed to begin working alongside prosecutors who I had previously held a significant amount of bias against.
And maybe for the audience to understand the context, I'm formerly incarcerated. I served 15 years in prison from the time I was 17 to the time I was 32. So becoming the first formerly incarcerated person ever hired by the U.S. DOJ in 2011 was a significant opportunity, but one that also challenged my biases and preconceived notions of what people are and were.
Fast-forward 15 years into my career in public service and adjacent to justice systems, I've begun to understand a lot deeper as to the importance of seeing people as humans first. And then when you see people as humans first, you can then begin to build bridges and accomplish things. Now, I will state in all transparency, Simon is far more advanced in bridge building, both skill and experience, in that prior to Simon and I working together and traveling on this journey, I've not necessarily called myself a bridge builder. So that language has been adopted since Simon and I have been together.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Simon, anything you would add to that? What does a bridge builder specifically do?
Simon Greer:
Yeah. Yeah. And Saad, I think maybe you did add the language to it more recently, but your whole ethos is like, I don't know, it's somewhere where big teddy bear meets bridge builder. So I don't know. That feels like kind of who you are. I think maybe what's important to say from my point of view is that there's a lot of fancy words that get thrown around with this bridge-building stuff, like pluralism and dialogue and civil discourse. And frankly, I'm not sure what any of that means to regular people.
But to me, bridge building means crossing lines of difference. So engaging with people who don't see the world the same way you do, who don't understand it the same way as you, have very different approach and view of things, and engaging with them to try to solve problems. That's bridge building. Now, what I've seen sometimes is that people think I'm saying kumbaya, mushy middle, watered-down compromise, like, "If Tim gives up his values and Saad gives up his and I give up mine, we could all just get along," or if we just find our lowest-common-denominator values, like, "Don't all our traditions say, 'Love your neighbor'? Isn't that enough? We can just build some bridges."
But I want to be clear right off. That's not what I mean. I mean, bipartisanship is how you find common ground to solve problems with the people on the things where you do agree. To me, bridge building or pluralism, whatever you want to call it, is how you live together with the people where you have deep disagreements. And while I'm interested in the former, I think it's important that we solve the problems we can solve, low-hanging fruit, that's great, I'm really most fascinated by the existential questions where we hold fundamentally different views.
And the promise of America is that we could live here in respectful, healthy tension around those things, benefiting from the fact that we do see them differently. That is beautiful that we see them differently. But in that beauty, it doesn't mean it's easy, because some of those differences are pretty deep. They're bigger than how you vote. Right?
They're like, "What happens after you die?" They're big questions. And I think the work of the bridge builder is to find a way to build out of those very deeply held differences, how to build enough shared humanity, as Tim and Saad have both referenced, to be able to live together and thrive in our own ways and honor our differences.
Tim Muehlhoff:
So we've been making the argument that part of that is going to entail perspective-taking, which we simply define as the capacity to assume and maintain another person's point of view. It doesn't mean you condone it. It doesn't mean that I fully buy into it, but I start to see the world through the eyes of another person. And certainly, that was a huge part of our trip to Israel.
One, what do you think of this idea of perspective-taking? And we're making the argument that maybe perspective-taking isn't valued as much as it used to be due to the polarization that we're facing today. So, Saad, what do you think of this idea of seeing the world through the eyes of another person?
Saad Soliman:
I think it's fundamental. Perspective-taking is the foundation of all effective communication and understanding. I think it's the difference between... I learned this from Simon in a really profound way, though he never spoke to this in a lesson. It's the difference between trying to win a conversation and trying to understand one. He has this energy of understanding rather than winning. Right? And I think I admire that significantly about him, and I've taken on pieces of that.
Now, in the context of my work, reentry, criminal justice reform, perspective-taking allows us to step into the lived experience of someone whose path may be radically different than the establishment, and still recognize the shared human desire for dignity, safety, opportunity, and belonging. In this context, I think even more so, it's a much more charged set of dialogue instead of subject matter as we're relating it to the Israel-Palestine subject matter and Muslim-Jewish-Christian interfaith relations, and it's just simply... I believe it to be foundational. Perspective-taking is just... I can't overstate how important it is.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Simon, would you agree with our assertion, and I think we have some research to back this up, that perspective-taking is not being valued as much as it once was? Why should I enter your perspective if I know your community is wrong? I've already determined you see the world in a way that conflicts with how my community sees the world. So do you agree that maybe we're losing the ability of perspective-taking today?
Simon Greer:
Yeah. I like how you phrased that. I want to just say first, I want to echo what Saad said. I want to go a step further. I think it's sacred, holy work. This is not a tactic we're talking about. This is not technique. This is like, "Do you embody the belief that we're all made in the image of God?" because if you do, then you would take seriously walking in someone else's shoes, seeing the world from their perspective. And if you don't practice that, then I don't think you're living up to that tall order.
So to me, that's not lightweight stuff. Having said that, Tim, I would challenge... I don't know if we used to do it, frankly. Our history was written, some would say, by a relatively narrow set of the winners, and I don't know how much they took other people's perspectives in telling the story of our history or our humanity. So I'm not sure we were ever that good at it.
But having said that, I do agree it's under assault today, and I think what you said is exactly right. If I know you're the bad guys, why would I embody your perspective? And I actually think, because often, we don't argue with the people we disagree with to try to convince them. We do it to try to prove to our own team how loyal we are. Right? We do moral grandstanding.
Perspective-taking is the antidote to moral grandstanding. And if I'm afraid you're going to cancel me or call me out, or my team's going to think I'm suspect because I took on your perspective, then, phew, I'm sure not going to do that. I'm going to mock your perspective. I'm going to caricature it, and I think that's a tragedy. And if I could give you one quick example, which is close to home for you. When I come to Biola, and as listeners know, I've been a few times, I'm not Christian, and you guys talk a lot about the love of Jesus. Right? That's a big deal for you.
Can you imagine if when you guys were saying that, I walked in, and I was like, "Ah, I don't really believe in that. That's not my thing"? Like, "Yeah. He was a Jewish guy, but so what? Let's move on." You'd be like, "Okay. Let's escort him off campus as quickly as he got here." But the expectation isn't that I would have to come to believe what you believe, but that I would step into your shoes and be like, "Wow, doesn't the world look amazing from where they sit, from where Barry Corey sits, from where Tim sits?"
Those guys, they live in this world that is so magical for them because of how they experience the world through their understanding of God, and I should take that super seriously because it enhances my experience of life and my relationship with you all, and those things matter a lot to me. And so, for me, there's, as I said, nothing more holy and more under assault than perspective-taking.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Simon, let's stay with you for a second, because Saad and I know your background story just a little bit, but our listeners may not. So you unexpectedly lost your job in philanthropy, and then you decided to do something. You went and took three years to try to do perspective-taking with a certain group of people. Can you just set that up real quickly, why that was such a remarkable thing, this particular group of people after you lost your job?
Simon Greer:
Yeah. So a lot of my career was in progressive, left-wing, if you will, politics and social change work and philanthropy. And I had come to feel after 2012, there was something wrong in how I was doing my work, which I had gotten into the work, because I had this deep faith in people. I thought everyday people could make history, but I had sort of drifted away from that to come to believe that people should just agree with me. Forget them manifesting their fullest selves. They should just be on my team politically, to be crass about it.
And as part of that, I had demonized and caricatured and simplified and flattened the people I disagreed with, and I'd made the issues very simple so we could drive rage against the villains that we identified, and I started to feel nauseous about that. But being just mortal, I was afraid to change, because I was popular, and I thought I would become much less popular if I started to question the orthodoxies of my team.
And so, I didn't. I carried on with what I was doing, and then, as Tim mentioned, I kind of, out of nowhere, lost my job, and I was sad. I was embarrassed. I felt uncomfortable and worried and maybe a little humiliated. But pretty quickly, it was like the golden handcuffs had been released. I was like, "Oh, I know what I'm going to do. The groups I have caricatured, white working-class conservatives and corporate and business leaders, I am going to immerse myself with those people. I'm going to find every way I can to hang around with them."
So I made small investments in startup companies so I could sit at the investor table. I was like, "Oh, I think that's what businesspeople do, so I'll do that." And then I got connected to some corrections officers, union members out in Michigan, and started hanging around with them, and it took me on a journey of really the better part of three years, as you said, spending my time with the people who I believed I had fundamental disagreements with and who had been the targets in a way of a lot of the campaigns that I had been involved in.
Yeah. I learned a lot about them for sure, and it was through perspective-taking. I didn't go to try to convince them they were wrong, which is what my job used to be. I just went to try to listen to them. I always say I went, Saad was referencing this, from trying to win the conversation to trying to exhaust my capacity to understand.
And in the end, what I came to understand was mostly about myself, about the lines I had drawn, about the assumptions I had made, about the ways I had narrowed my circles. And as a result, it sort of blew all that wide open. Now, it did not make me popular with my own home team, but it did open the world to me in a different way.
Tim Muehlhoff:
But were you afraid of losing your home team? Aren't these friends? Aren't these people you once admired? I mean, are you saying that it comes with a cost to step out and go to the very people you demonized, that it really does cost you with your in-group?
Simon Greer:
For sure. I mean, it's brave work. Look, just so it's clear, I knew it's what I should do. I did not do it until I lost my job, because the stakes were too high. I was afraid. I mean, call me a coward, but I was afraid to risk my reputation, my fancy office, car service, expense account. I didn't want to lose those things. But I knew deep down that I was called to do something different, to engage with the other side differently.
And once I had nothing to lose, because I had lost the job, I didn't have the position, I didn't have the grantmaking stature, any of that, I didn't have the title, in a way, then I was free. I lost it. So now, I have nothing else to lose. Why not just go hang around with the people I've demonized? I might as well do that.
And, I mean, I didn't get more popular afterwards. In 2016, the summer of '16, I wrote a memo predicting that she was going to lose, and that's Hillary Clinton, not Kamala Harris, and I was attacked for it. Right? I was called a racist, a misogynist, a xenophobe, and I was like, "Look, I'm not weighing in on whether I want Hillary Clinton to lose. All I'm saying is I'm out there listening, not selling. And you can feel there's Trump signs in rural America, from rural New Hampshire to rural Washington State. There is a rage in our country that you are missing."
And instead of hearing the story I was telling, people tried to demonize me, and that's when I got the clearest sense, like, "Yeah. This is going to cost me in my relationships, in the circles where I had standing." But frankly, I don't have that much standing there anymore because I don't have the job. And deep down, I know not just this is smarter politics, but this is how I want to live my life. This is how I want to be a father to my kids. This is the legacy I want to leave.
I want people to see that Saad's uncles and my uncles fought against each other in a war, and I've invited him to sleep in my home next door, in the bedroom across the hall from me and my wife and next door to my daughter, because I trust him and I love him. Tim Muehlhoff, you are an evangelical Christian. That represents the enemy in the progressive story in America today, and I love you. I think the world of you. I would do anything for you.
And frankly, that's how I want to live, not in a small box defined by a set of labels that actually don't accurately describe the people within the box, but it keeps them constrained, and it keeps them locked in a story that is driving our country to despair, and demonizing people along the way in a way that's like, it's corrupting for all of us. So sorry to get on my soapbox there, but to me, it was a high-stakes move that I didn't have the courage to do until the stakes got lowered. I was right that the stakes were high, but the glory on the other side was worth it.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Well, and we have greatly benefited that you took that risk. Saad, let's talk about a risk that you took as well. Simon just very briefly mentioned this, but you guys were at a meeting together about prison reform, and you found out that 1967 was a pivotal year for both of you, although neither of you had been born yet. Can you explain what Simon said very quickly about relatives being involved and even dying in the Six-Day War?
Saad Soliman:
Yeah. No. Absolutely. First, I just want to call out and say, Simon, I love you too, man. You're the best. Thank you for sharing what you just shared. It was very, very passionate, and it just resonated very deeply with me. But yeah, I was called by a friend who's a national... He's in charge of a national organization that does criminal justice reform, and he says, "Hey, Saad, I have this crazy idea. I want to pull together a group of correctional officer union leaders and formerly incarcerated criminal justice reform advocates. Put us all in a room, and begin having conversation."
And I was like, "That's bizarre." Those are the ops. That is the opposition. Whenever we propose any kind of policy recommendations, they're the ones on the other side of the aisle, opposing, opposing, opposing. So it felt like a very far stretch, but I agreed, because, well, why wouldn't you agree to doing something that makes you uncomfortable?
So I went, and here's where it gets really, really interesting. While I'm there psychologically preparing myself to stretch myself in my professional capacity, I'm talking to this facilitator at our first night's dinner, and we begin sharing stories. I don't know how we got to the subject matter, but we started covering, and I shared that my father had lost three of his brothers, my uncles, prior to my birth, in the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt in 1967, and he would then share to me that, "Well, it's ironic, because I remember that as a source of great pride, because my uncles served in that same war in '67, and I remember them posing in front of a picture of a captured Egyptian tank."
And at that moment when Simon shared that his uncles fought in the Six-Day War, in Arabic, it's called the Naksah, I felt something shift inside me, not just intellectually, but spiritually. I was standing at the intersection of pain and possibility. Here was someone whose story mirrored mine but from the other side of the battlefield, literally.
I could have stayed in the safety of my own narrative, nodded politely, and moved on, but that would have been a betrayal of everything that I say I am and I believe in. And that fork in the road, it wasn't about politics or history. It was about courage, and I chose to pursue Simon, because I believe transformation for both of us happens not when we defend our wounds, but when we honor each other's humanity, and I didn't see an opponent. I saw a partner in healing.
And I'm so thankful that I chose that path, because it's enriched my life a hundredfold by just being Simon's friend and connected to Simon both professionally and personally. As he mentioned, our daughters know each other. They're both same age, 13. One loves Taylor Swift. The other one, not so Swiftie, and it's just like they're so much were more alike than different, and it's just been such an amazing experience.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Simon, I've heard you talk about this as well. There's this meeting. And you say very powerfully that when you heard of Saad's family's involvement, relatives, that time stood still, and you were in a fork in the road. Do you pursue this or not? What did that feel like?
Simon Greer:
Yeah. 100%. I remember we had this exchange. I think Saad went first. He was telling his family story, and he talked about '67, and I would say his Egyptian... Saad, if it's fair to say, his Egyptian nationalism that maybe was put onto steroids as a result of losing his brothers, and I, of course, knew my family story. And it's one of those funny things. Literally, time stood still, and I ran through in my head all the reasons not to tell him.
I'm here as the facilitator. We're here to talk about criminal justice. This is a total distraction. There's a lot of bridges you can cross, but this one, this is out of bounds. I mean, maybe it took half a second, but it felt like forever that I had all the reasons not to share, and I probably was holding my breath. And then, Saad, I had this feeling. I was like, "Am I serious about this? Really? Am I serious about this, or is this something you do when it's cute?"
And so, I just went for it, and I told him, and I didn't hold back. I could have gone 10 yards down the field and been like, "Oh, my uncles were involved in the conflict too," or I could have gone 20 yards and been like, "Oh, yeah. My uncles fought for the Israeli IDF," or I could have gone 30, "They posed in front of a captured tank." But I said, right, Saad, "This was a source of pride in my family. In the shadow of the Holocaust, the Jews could stand up and defend themselves." That mattered in my family's story.
I still have that picture up today in my office. And so, I didn't go soft on it. Right? And understandably, Saad could have been like, "Well, let's step outside and finish this." Right? But instead, he was like... I mean, you remember, Saad? We walked back up to the rooms afterwards, and he leans over, and he goes, "Shalom." And it's just like, "What could be sweeter than that?"
Tim Muehlhoff:
Yeah.
Simon Greer:
I mean, this is such a good case study, because we don't necessarily agree about a lot of things, and we were raised in very different narratives. But, and he has done this so well, whenever Saad says something about the Middle East, and I'm like, "Huh, interesting, Saad. I would think about it this way," he's like, "Huh, I'm going to try that on." You know what I mean? And then he walks in the, "Oh, I grew up in a narrative where that couldn't have been true, but Simon seems reasonable, and it's true for him. Let me take it on."
And I've done the same. It's like, "Well, I wouldn't have called it that. That's what you call it in Arabic? That's not what I would've called it. Oh, is it a defensive war? Was it an offensive war? By who? Preemptive? Let me live into how you and your family understand this." That doesn't mean that all facts are mushy. We, at some point, have to agree what happened, what didn't happen, but it almost matters more how his family's narrative makes meaning of what happened and how my family's narrative makes meaning of it.
And if we're ever going to find peace, I have to at least be able to say, "Saad, I hung out in your shoes a little bit. I tried to sit in your perspective. While I do not accept it, I don't see it that way. I understand that this is deeply held for you, and I'm taking it seriously. I'm not just spitting on it and casting it aside. It's not true for me, but I understand that you're never going to let go of that truth. So we have to figure out how to make peace where you can hold onto your truth and I can hold onto mine, and we can still live here together." And since that's the point of the podcast, that is perspective-taking, I believe, at its highest level.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Mm-hmm. Saad, speak to our listeners right now who find themselves equally in a fork in the road, like, "There's a family member. I don't agree with their politics," or "There's a coworker. I do not agree with their lifestyle. I just don't." So they're at a fork in the road. Do I just ignore this and we just keep on being family members and we shelve this, or do I take a courageous step that you did with Simon? What would be your advice to a person who says, "I'm legitimately at the same fork in the road you found yourself at"?
Saad Soliman:
So Simon has this curriculum that he's created that I think is absolutely brilliant. And in one of the sections, he covers there's a difference between curiosity and compliance, and curiosity gives this approach that sort of disarms... It disarms when it's presented. So to that extent, compliance is more like, "I have to do this." Okay. It's a begrudging almost energy that arms people on the approach. Right? It gives the receiving party this feeling like they're a burden, and their thoughts, their opinions, their feelings are something that is unpleasant, at which point they then have to defend and dig their heels in rather than listen.
So I would say, in the approach, leading with curiosity brings the next cousin of curiosity, humility, and can then introduce that maybe other cousin twice removed, courage, to come into seeing the world through someone else's eyes, especially when it challenges our own. And I promise you, you will be better for it. I promise you, you will be enhanced rather than diminished. I promise you that you will be enriched rather than devalued.
Tim Muehlhoff:
That's so good. Saad, I'm glad you brought up his curriculum, Simon's curriculum. We both have gone through it, and it occurs to me we've not even gotten to the October 7th, 2023, terrorist attack and the trip that we took. I'd love to have you both back on. We can dive into that trip, but I want to hang out for a second in the curriculum, Simon, just for a second.
Simon Greer:
Sure.
Tim Muehlhoff:
One thing that you do that I think is really interesting is you offer an invitation to people to engage each other. And I wonder, just very quickly, can you tell our listeners what that invitation is? What does it sound like, and how maybe we could even use that invitation with a family member as we're setting up this conversation and perspective-taking?
Simon Greer:
Sure. Yeah. I'm happy to. So it's a four-part invitation. And like most of my work, it didn't come from, I would say, a theoretical framework. It came out of practice, kind of experimentation, and now it's at the anchor of how I think about this work. So the first idea is... And there's sort of four couplets. The first one is we're going to take seriously the things that others hold dear. If it matters to you, then it'll matter to me.
We're going to be curious what people think the things they do. We're not going to try to change them, but we want to understand them. The third one is that we don't think that we are diminished by hearing opinions and positions and points of view that we disagree with. We think we're enhanced by it, and that, finally, we believe there's more common ground than we might expect. But even when there isn't, when there are fundamental disagreements, we can still respect and even love the people we disagree with.
And for me, those four couplets, if you will, that could be like a mantra. Right? It could be like a prayer. It could be like a centering practice. It could be something that we keep coming back to as a way we want to engage with the world. And to your point, Tim, I think it does apply perfectly to my uncle who shows up at Thanksgiving dinner, and I know... My first thought is, "Let me sit at the other end of the table so I don't have to deal with him."
Tim Muehlhoff:
Yes.
Simon Greer:
Right? And it's like, "Well, that's kind of living in pretense." Right? That's not really honoring the sanctity of this soul sitting over there. It's like, I've kind of diminished myself and diminished him. I sort of run away from it. So what I should really do is say, "I want to sit next to my uncle, no matter how hard it's going to be." And then for me, honoring that invitation would be using skills that get at the very things that Saad referenced.
So when my uncle says the thing that really just drives me up the wall, I could google the alternative facts to his and counterpunch, like land a jab really quick and hope I put him back on his heels, or I could say something like, "Can you tell me a little more about that?" Because what I found is that behind that very aggressive, trying to beat me with the facts, behind that is some deeply held values.
If he were to say, "Well, I learned that from my dad, and it really matters to me," or "I read that in the Bible, and that's holy for me," or "I've risked my life to defend that principle," well, okay, then it wouldn't be worth really me trotting out my facts now, would it? It'd be more valuable for me to say, "I really see it pretty differently, and I tell you, the reason I see it this way is from this place, from this experience, from this journey, because of this story."
So I think the principles of invitation and the practices of open-ended questions, of reflective listening, all those ideas are to take seriously the people who we love, hopefully ever-expanding circles of people who we love, who see the world differently, and to believe that it's good to hear them out, and it's good to hear what's beneath their facts and their information and their strong stances.
And I've seen this, Tim, actually in our work together on a lot of the most controversial issues. When you actually get into the depths of the conversation with someone about why they hold this nonnegotiable position, actually, they may not feel flexible, but they understand why it's complicated. And so, instead of being like, "Oh, you're one of them? You believe that thing? Well, I believe this thing. We have no common ground," it's like, "Well, actually, can you make room in your imagination for why my view on this has..." The death penalty is such a good issue for this.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Yeah. Yup.
Simon Greer:
The most strident pro-death penalty people and the most anti-death penalty people, they can find around the edges. There are moral qualms in both categories. And when you find that, it doesn't mean that I've changed my posture or my position, but I can be more generous to the people I disagree with, because I could admit if I trusted you. I could admit that it's not quite that crystal clear for me. So anyway, I hope that helps.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Well, I want to thank you for The Invitation because... And I know this is going to shock both of you, but sometimes I have really bad days when it comes to my opinion, and I wish I wasn't the co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project. I'd like to be the co-director of the Bring Down the Fire Project. And so, with a family member, we tried to talk about politics. It did not work, spectacularly did not work. You know it's going bad when your wife walks outside and just goes, "Shh," as I'm yelling into the cell phone, the person who wrote I Beg to Differ: Navigating Difficult Conversations in Truth and Love. Yes, I wrote that book.
So I wanted to redo it. I literally, Simon, pulled out your notes and said to this person, "Listen, I've come across something called The Invitation, and let me just read to you what The Invitation is. I'd like to do a reboot, and can we do it with The Invitation?" And Simon, we actually had a fairly productive conversation.
Simon Greer:
Really?
Tim Muehlhoff:
Yeah. We never once raised our voices. And then afterwards, we just said, "You know what? This was really good, and I apologize again. I really did get heated." And so, let me just encourage listeners. The Invitation is really powerful, just to kind of lay the expectations and the ground rules. Well, listen, we want to have you both back, because we need to talk about this amazing trip that you organized, Simon, to go and just address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after the terrorist attacks of October 7th, 2023. So will you guys come back?
Saad Soliman:
Absolutely.
Simon Greer:
I will if Saad will.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Okay. Awesome. Awesome. Hey, thank you for listening to the Winsome Conviction podcast. If you want to hear more, go to winsomeconviction.com. You can sign up for our quarterly newsletter. You can also hear all the interviews we've ever done, Simon being part of that. And thank you for taking time to listen, and we hope that you find this valuable both in content and maybe courage-producing that these good conversations can happen. So thank you so much, and we'll talk more.
