With the presidential inauguration just days away, we’ve all witnessed how polarized our conversations have become. Nowhere is this truer than on social media. For many of us, social media has become a normal part of our daily life. This constant exposure to quarrels and conflicts has a remarkably destructive effect on our capacity to engage in thoughtful dialogue.

In James K. A. Smith’s book, Desiring the Kingdom, he explains that we are creatures “shaped, primed, and aimed” by our daily practices. Similarly, in Plato’s Phaedrus, a dialogue that covers the relationship between our love and our rhetorical practices, Plato defines rhetoric as “the art of soul leading by means of words.” We should be worried about the effect that these emotionally difficult and polarizing conversations have on our character.

So, what are we to do? Should we retreat to our own corner of the digital landscape, invoking the Internet equivalent of the Benedict option? Another option at our fingertips is to double our efforts. Should we adopt the approach of the evangelistic and apologetic Internet ministries? We could don our presuppositional armor and brandish our rhetorical weapons and charge into war. Every tweet, like, and shared news article can become a battlefield. While both of these tactics are used frequently, I propose another way forward.

What if we took charge of our use of language and argument and used these digital interactions as opportunities to practice gracious, civil speech that builds community up rather than tearing it apart? Now that we know our goal, we have already moved toward it. The first step is amassing an awareness of the power of our words. For people to take what they say seriously, they first must realize that words are a force that change the world by galvanizing and directing people toward various ends.

Next, it would be wise for us to begin to acquire techniques that enable us to disarm rhetorical techniques that ruin civil dialogue before it even begins. One of the most common techniques is what rhetorician Richard Weaver called ultimate terms, words like, ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’, ‘modern’, ‘scientific’, and ‘fact’. These are words with definitions that stretch across worldviews. As ultimate terms, they can serve as an automatic approval or dismissal of an argument. Without even reading what someone says, we assume we know where someone is coming from and what they believe when we see these words. Furthermore, we put these terms to work in our own arguments to galvanize our own tribe to defend us. They serve as rallying cries for those we agree with and as targets for those who find our position disagreeable.