249 Relational Epistemology and the Art of Living Together 7 the outside than when you know the people because you meet them every day. Then it’s harder to deal with or judge them very radically. • A mixed teacher–student group identified non-judging in meeting 6 as one of the main traits for learning to handle cultural and social diversity: You need to know the culture, be compassionate with the target group, suspend judgment and get behind the motivations. • In meeting 7, the outsider group concluded based on student experiences that listening carefully really helps them: Students said, ‘My eyes were really opened to other situations, prejudices falling away, appearances being less important, the great hospitality of parents and the school’. • Meeting 8 was opened with a devotion on Ezequiel 34 (1–6 and 11–16) and the metaphor of the shepherd, resulting in this conclusion: It is important that we look like the good Shepherd, who does not judge based on origin, status or talents, but who has an eye for what differs from the norm. • During meeting 11, a member of the outsider group spoke about the goal of having an interview with a fundamentally different Christian: You don’t have to agree with each other, do you? That’s not the purpose of such a conversation. One member of the insider group added: Indeed, without judgment. To which yet another insider group member responded: It would be nice if they would discover something like ‘I don’t agree with that person, but he is actually much more consistent in his person, his teaching and his life than we might be sometimes’. To ensure that, with all this attention being paid to careful and non-judging listening, students will also learn that this creates space to maintain their own convictions, a special song was prepared for a masterclass as part of DCU’s personhood formation. The text came from an old American gospel song, composed in 1873 by Philip P. Bliss under the title ‘Dare to Be a Daniel’ but famously quoted in Dutch Parliament in 1875 by Abraham Kuyper to challenge the Minister of Education to show his stance on the contradictory demands from Christian and public schools. Kuyper (1875) quoted the song as ‘Dare to Be a Straight-Out Man’. As it was not known at the time that it was not just a poem but an already composed song, at DCU, the department of music collaborated in putting a melody to the text that could be sung in canon. The idea was to teach students in a vivid and memorable way that, even when confronted with an assignment to listen without judgment, they could be a clear self with their own stance for which they had no need to be ashamed—that is, critical openness does not automatically imply harm to critical faithfulness, as it can also generate space to be a truthful self.
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