Raising the Bar: Loving Disagreement Book Review

By Katie Nguyen Palomares

I

recently had the pleasure of reading Loving Disagreement: Fighting for Community Through the Fruit of the Spirit. The day after finishing it, I also happened to attend a local conference called Faith in Polarized Times.

I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to pick up on what I sense may become a theme that unfolds for the rest of this year…

Welcome to 2024.

An election year - not just in our country, but globally.

A year marked by growing polarization - in and out of the church.

A year where it will be imperative for the church to figure out exactly how to fight for community through the fruit of the Spirit in disagreement.

Before I share some of the beautiful and edifying insights from Loving Disagreement, let me be clear: I commend this book to everyone. Particularly Christians living in the West who are trying to figure out how to navigate the growing sense of polarization and black/white, right/wrong sort of thinking.

In a time such as this where it may be too easy to give up on hope with how many disagreements we come across each day, authors Kathy Khang and Matt Mikalatos build on each other’s perspectives throughout their book in a way that models a gracious and edifying example of what living out “loving disagreement” can look like. Not only in how it can help us to grow in our own lives, but how it can benefit our communities around us.

There were a million different ways Kathy and Matt could have approached such a difficult topic. I love that their guiding framework is essentially contextualizing what different fruits of the Spirit can and even should look like in the context of a polarized culture. “Fighting for community through the fruit of the Spirit.”

Without giving too much away, (because you should definitely buy and read this book in its entirety), one of my favorite quotes from the book is when Kathy encourages us with this, “My desire to live faithfully compels me to revisit beliefs and practices. I think about the ways in which my current beliefs do not align with those of my parents, whose faithfulness set into motion my belief in Jesus,” (Khang, 128). 

As Asian Americans and even more broadly, as people of color in America who are striving to live faithfully and in a way that embodies justice for our neighbors, we understand that this is an embodied struggle, and sometimes sacrifice, that we experience deeply.

The faith that helped our parents and our families survive in this country can sometimes be at odds with the growing faith of the younger generation that looks around and is asking, “How can my faith impact the world around me?” It’s a complicated question.

Khang offers this piece of wisdom for our consideration:

“But I pray that our faithfulness continues to invite us together, even when it’s uncomfortable or awkward. Because in our commitment to faithfulness–true faithfulness, rooted not in sameness but in discernment–we will find ourselves together in God’s presence in ways that live out the Good News for our extended family and communities,” (Khang, 128, emphasis added).

Throughout the whole book, Kathy Khang and Matt Mikalatos both invite the reader to reimagine and to raise the bar of what disagreement can look like amongst believers. And not only that, but to imagine what fruit can actually be born out of Christians collectively fighting for community and faithfulness through engaging in loving disagreement with one another.

The book ends with this reflection from Matt:

“It takes time for fruit to appear, but if we truly have the Holy Spirit in our lives, we can trust that fruit is coming. Over and over, our lives should and will bear fruit. It’s a high bar in one sense, but in another it’s just what we expect a healthy tree to do.

May God bless us with more fruit as we argue and disagree and grow together in the years to come,” (Mikalatos, 173, emphasis added).

For those of you who, like me, feel yourself beginning to spin from the growing polarization in and out of the church…

For those of you who desire to embody and live out the Good News for your families and your community…

For those of you who are questioning if it’s possible to ask questions without winding up going at each other’s throats…

For those of you who are wondering how to live and love and bear the fruits of the Spirit in today’s culture and climate…

I commend this book to you.

It is well worth a read, and may even engender something in you that I personally haven’t felt for a long time…

Hope.

Image courtesy NavPress.

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Katie is a Mixed Vietnamese/White pastor, writer, and speaker in Austin. She works with Kingdom Capital Network as the Program Manager serving and empowering small business owners to make a kingdom impact in their communities and with AACC as the Marketing/Comms Coordinator and part of the Editorial team. She earned her M.A. in Christian Leadership from DTS and B.A. in English with teacher certification from Texas State. She also consumes books like they’re chips, can often be found bouldering on indoor rocks with her husband, or enjoying a good cup of coffee and conversation!