What Am I Seeing?

I look around the world, and especially my country, and I am totally flabbergasted at what is going on and my consternation grows each day. We have lost our work ethic, sense of honor, honesty, integrity, courage of our convictions, or even a basic understanding of reading comprehension. Because of these noted deficiencies we have a very difficult time agreeing on anything.

Now someone says, someone for which I have very high regard, I was being misleading on what I was laying out. I stand by what I wrote. What I see, anecdotally, is if people dislike what the actual text of a law, a religious text, or some other text with which they disagree, they try to read the text a way it was never intended to rationalize whatever they are trying to do. I speak from personal experience.

What I can say is before I became a real adult I would look for ways to get out of things, find a loophole, or argue semantics. When I became a man, I put away childish things. It is just part of taking responsibility for your actions.

If you disagree with a law, fight to have it changed. If you disagree with a tenet of your faith, be honest about it and leave the faith if you cannot reconcile with the text. Your faith is your business and you have every right to speak in any way you wish, but it is disingenous of you to be untruthful about the reason you disagree and not make it about, “God didn’t really mean it”. You do not agree, or in this particular instance, the writer of this part of a text I say is still inspired, is wrong. The writer got everything else in the text right but this particular thing. I know it says the same thing in other parts of the text, but I think it is wrong.

Sorry, I am not buying it. Deal with your conscience or your changing faith honestly and in a straightforward way. Do not tear down an entire faith, which has stood the test of time, because you are no longer able to stand by the entire theology of a faith because you think your God has to change to conform to you, when the who purpose of a faith is you to change to the ideal of the faith you willingly have stayed in.

It is very arrogant to think everyone in a faith has to change for you. If you think a faith is wrong you can start a new one and worship in any way you wish. What I see now is denominations, such as the Methodists, are in very painful splits brought on my those wanting the faith to change away from their sacred texts to mirror the society at large. Those who hold on to the the basic tenets of their faith will not change. This leads to the split of the denomination/faith into differing groups. Which, if those who didn’t agree had just left; the whole painful process could have been avoided.

Being different from one another, believing differently than one another is okay. In fact, it is so important it is codified in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. It allows American citizens to say what they want, believe what they want, associate with whomever they want, and live most any way they want. It was a reason people left Europe, to have a place where this is all possible.

If you see a group of people happy in their belief system, allow them to be happy. Do not think they have to change to accommodate you, to change what makes them happy and fulfilled to please you or make you feel welcome. For you to expect them to change solely for you, is the height of arrogance and narcissism.

If you want to discuss your differences, and they do also, by all means have the discussion; this is also what America is all about. A free exchange of ideas, a peaceful, free exchange of ideas. The peaceful part seems to be the rub these days. No one seems to be able to give someone else the space to be able to express themselves without trying to “cancel” someone who disagrees. I really do not understand how you think you are so much the arbiter of right and wrong you get to decide whom can express themselves on the public stage.

I have very strong beliefs which I will defend until the end of time; but, I also know I only get to make those decisions for myself. I do not get to be the arbiter of what others believe. I do not have the right to suppress other people sharing their ideas no matter what I might think of them. It is this “marketplace of ideas” which bring the best ideas to the fore and allow us, as a country, to have the correct policies by trying them out. By doing this we find the one which works best.

We do not need to shut someone down who could have the answer to world peace, ending famine, actually make fusion work. Sometimes crackpots, the antisocial, the misfits of our society come up with the best ideas. If you shut those people out of the discourse, or ignore those not like you, you will miss the best and most interesting conversations and the chance to maybe learn a little something about yourself.