IF ONLY

Life, my life at least, would be so much easier if everyone agreed with me. If everyone thought like me, reasoned like me, understood as I understand, why preaching and teaching would be a piece of cake. We would all be on the same wavelength and be able to get to the core of any problem very quickly. Wouldn’t that be wonderful for me! However, it might not be so wonderful for someone else.

   We all would like others to agree with us, to think and understand as we do, to see life and all life is about from our particular perspective. Then there would be less disagreement, less dissension and division and, perhaps, even true peace in this world. But no two peoples and no two people think alike, operate with the same mindset, the same principles, the same belief system simply because we are unique. We are each one of a kind. That is the way God created us. That is the way we are. That is the way we will always be. That is why we will never be of one mind on everything.

   The reason I believe what I believe is the result of sixty-two years of living: sixty-two years of unique thoughts and experiences. Since I have not experienced everything there is to experience and not thought about everything there is to think about, there are still great gaps in my education and in my understanding. And so it is with everyone else. Thus, when my gap meets your understanding or your gap, or vice versa, we will no doubt disagree because we cannot see what the other sees.

   If only we could, but we cannot. That is why while we must stand up for our beliefs and convictions, we cannot and must not negate or belittle those who do not see or understand the way we do. We may try to convince another about the truth of which we are convicted, but we may not succeed. Some truths are only arrived at through a lifetime of thinking, experiencing, learning. Sometimes they are never arrived at.

   And sometimes what we believe to be true may indeed be false, may be wrong. We may go to our grave believing something to be true that we discover in eternity to be false. And we may only discover in death that what we thought was false was in fact quite true. Life would be so much easier if we all knew the whole truth and lived our lives based on nothing but the truth. If only.

   In the meantime, as each of us struggles to discover the truth, we have to agree to disagree on some matters, perhaps even on some issues of faith and morality. We do not have all the answers because we have not yet asked all the questions and because we will never fully understand God and God’s ways. We must never try to force our beliefs on anyone but must live our beliefs to the fullest. We will never convince another simply because we have the better argument. We will convince another by the way we live out our faith.

   Jesus never convinced nor converted anyone by trying to change his or her mind. He tried to change the way they lived and he did it by modeling that lifestyle. So did the early church. So must we today. If only there were an easier way, but there is not.                                                           WJP