Across the Table

How Distance Shapes What We Believe About Each Other

I grew up in the charming town of Madison, Indiana, along the Ohio River. While my hometown boasted hydroplanes and historic architecture, it was not known for its diversity in the 1980s—especially religious diversity. And when I say religious diversity, I don’t mean different Christian denominations. I mean anything outside of Christianity.

In Madison, like much of middle America, you were either Christian or not. Until high school, the only Muslims I knew of were Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I didn’t know a single Muslim personally. My understanding of Islam wasn’t shaped by relationships—it was shaped by distance.

Years of news cycles—especially surrounding war, terrorism, and fear—quietly constructed a framework in my mind. It wasn’t something I consciously chose, but it was something I absorbed. And without any real relationships to challenge it, that framework hardened over time.

Even as my thinking matured, one thing remained true: I had never sat across the table from a Muslim and listened to their story.

That changed in the summer of 2018.

A friend invited me to join a three-month dialogue between a group of local Muslims and a multi-denominational gathering of Christian leaders. I didn’t hesitate. I knew instinctively that this was something I needed—not just intellectually, but humanly. I wanted to move beyond secondhand narratives and into real understanding.

When I walked into the conference room that first evening, most participants were already there. What I saw immediately struck me.

The Christians were seated on one side of the table.

The Muslims were seated on the other.

Without thinking, I took my place with the Christians.

I turned to my left and greeted the Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, and others. Then I turned to my right and greeted the Muslim group across from us.

It was subtle, almost unspoken—but unmistakable.

Two sides.

In many ways, the seating arrangement felt like a microcosm of the broader world. Two groups, facing each other from opposite ends. But it also revealed something closer to home. Even within our side of the table, we carried our own quiet divisions—denominations, labels, distinctions that separated us even as we claimed unity.

As the evening began, I wondered what each of us had carried into that room. What assumptions. What misconceptions. What quiet prejudices shaped by years of distance and secondhand information.

But something began to shift almost immediately.

As we introduced ourselves and shared our stories, it became clear that no one was there to debate. No one was there to win. We were there to understand.

And there is something powerful—almost disarming—about sitting in the presence of another human being and simply listening.

Stereotypes don’t survive proximity.

Caricatures dissolve in conversation.

The word Muslim—a label I had heard thousands of times—began to change. Because now it wasn’t a category. It was a person. A face. A voice. A story.

Within the first hour, something unexpected happened.

The distance closed.

We shared our backgrounds, our families, our experiences. Under sterile lights, gathered around a table with cheese, crackers, hummus, and fruit, we began to cut through years—decades—of assumption.

And what I realized in that moment was simple, but profound.

The change we hope to see in the world doesn’t begin at a distance.

It begins across a table.

For most of my life, I had formed opinions about people I had never known. I had inherited perspectives without ever testing them in the presence of real human lives. But here, in this room, those inherited ideas began to unravel—not through argument, but through relationship.

And the more I listened, the more I began to see something beyond this particular conversation.

This wasn’t just about Christians and Muslims.

It was about all of us.

We create categories for people we’ve never met. We inherit narratives we’ve never examined. We allow distance to do what distance always does—it simplifies, it hardens, it distorts.

From a distance, it is easy to reduce a person to a headline, a label, a single story. From a distance, “they” become easier to define—and easier to dismiss.

But proximity changes things.

When you sit across the table from someone, the categories begin to crack. The assumptions begin to loosen. And the person in front of you refuses to stay inside the story you had already written about them.

For a man who had never known a single Muslim by name, what happened next was deeply unsettling in the best possible way.

One by one, people across the table began to share their experiences.

They spoke of fear.

They spoke of being misunderstood.

They spoke of carrying the weight of actions they did not commit, yet were constantly associated with.

And as they spoke, I saw something I hadn’t expected.

Not anger. Not defensiveness.

Pain.

Real, human pain.

It was in that moment that something shifted in me—not just intellectually, but emotionally. The narratives I had absorbed over decades could not hold up under the weight of lived experience sitting just a few feet away.

Because it is one thing to hear about people.

It is another thing entirely to hear from them.

That night didn’t erase every difference. But it did something far more important.

It changed the posture of my heart.

It reminded me that understanding doesn’t begin with certainty—it begins with proximity. With humility. With the willingness to sit across from someone you do not fully understand and choose to listen anyway.

Sometimes, subverting the narrative doesn’t require a platform.

Sometimes, it just requires a table.

Question

Where in my life has distance shaped what I believe about others? Who ought to be on the other side of my table?

Peace,

Brandon

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