“It is not enough that I succeed; everyone else must fail.”

Google attributes this quote to a Mongol conqueror of the 12th and 13th centuries, though how Google would know baffles me: I can’t find one blog or social media post signed Genghis Khan. Seriously, the quote sparks amusement because it highlights how we humans are such dupes: In athletics and commerce, politics and religion, we reduce complicated measures of health and happiness to simple rivalry: Is my side beating the other side?

The New Testament is filled with examples of Christians confusing their faith with a worldly rivalry. Jesus’ first disciples disagreed over whether non-Jews could become Christians. Their disagreement quickly became a fight. Saints Peter and Paul—not at all in easy agreement with each other!—both played a role in resolving that first big rivalry. In other ways, again and again, the early Christians needed to be reminded that “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh.”

Prolifers, being human, are vulnerable to similar temptation. We form teams and compete as standard-bearers for the pro-life movement. “Whole-lifers” protest the inadequacies of prolifers who call only for the protection of the unborn in law and in life—never mind that, at least in my judgment, that was the original point of the movement. But at the other end of the spectrum, supposedly “hard core” prolifers sacrifice actual protection for ideological purity, denouncing those willing to make legislative compromises with pro-choicers.

And as a group, prolifers are also tempted to frame our movement simply as a rivalry between pro-choicers and us. If pro-choicers are mistaken when they characterize a child’s life as something that fundamentally competes with a mother’s, then prolifers also err when we see ourselves as advocates of the unborn against their mothers.

In a truly healthy motherhood—or fatherhood, for that matter—we value the life of our child as much if not more than our own. Even under the most difficult circumstances, such as when pregnancy threatens a woman’s physical wellbeing, a good mother thinks of her unborn child primarily as a person to be loved not as a threat to be eliminated. And in a healthy society, we not only value mother and child, but also pro-choicers and other political opponents with whom we disagree. Because even potential rivals share our life in this world, interacting with us in a web of complicated relationships.

Charles Duhigg’s new book Supercommunicators begins with a seemingly humdrum categorization of different types of conversations designed to help organizational leaders and professionals. But it concludes with the author’s surprising confession to having experienced a moment of enlightenment, in which he recognized how conversations steer relationships in directions that can make the difference between human happiness and misery.

Along the way, Duhigg has suggestions for how to prevent our most difficult relationships from descending into rivalries. His prescriptions make for good advice as to how prolifers can approach talking to pro-choicers:

1. Remember that everyone has multiple identities. No one is purely and simply reducible to a political affiliation such as prolifer or pro-choicer. Everyone is also someone’s daughter or son, neighbor or co-worker, and much more.

2. Remember that in the big picture, we are all basically equals: people created for friendship with God and with each other who have failed in our fellowship, but who are being restored for Jesus’ sake. “Once you were enemies [of God],” St. Paul says, “but now you are being reconciled.”

3. We can build new friendships on identities we share, and sometimes on identities we don’t share. Strong disagreements are a challenge for any two people, but we can often bond over differences other than disagreements, and even more so over things we hold in common.

The night before he died, Jesus  spoke poignantly to his disciples: “I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.” Jesus speaks of their  friendship, deepened by the mutual knowledge they now share, as he prepares the foundation for an eternal fellowship they will share with him and with each other.

We now call that fellowship the Church, and it is our mission to draw everyone else into that communion of life and love. This will not happen by defeating others in a worldly rivalry, but by how well we learn to love one another.