Reflection This Week
Will We Ever Be On the Same Page?
Someone put one of those missives that tend to clog our emails in my
mailbox a while back, after s/he printed it, of course. It has to do
with cows and how differing people respond or react. It’s funny
because it is so true – for the most part. It is filled with
generalizations and we all know how we should avoid such. Yet that
is also what makes it both funny and almost on the mark.
For instance: Democrat – You have two cows. Your
neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful.
Republican – You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So?
Socialist – You have two cows. The government takes one and
gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to
manage his cow. Bureaucracy – You have two cows. Under the
new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the
other, and then pours the milk down the drain. Italian (why
not?) – You have two cows but don’t know where they are. While
ambling around, you see a beautiful woman. You break for lunch. Life
is good.
I could go on. It does for three pages. The point is, I think,
that there is no universal agreement as to how someone or some
institution might respond given the same situation. We are not all
on the same page, certainly not now in this world, nor have we ever
been. One thus has to wonder if we ever will be. Given our vast
cultural differences and personal experiences, we may never, ever
be.
That is not to say that we should be. If we all agreed on
everything, life would be quite dull and boring. Yet, one would
hope, would one not, that we could at least agree on the truth?
However, even there we do not because we cannot. We cannot because
we do not see with the same eyes. We bring our personal past into
every moment of the present and our past always colors how we see
what we are now seeing. The fact that five people observing an
accident do not see exactly the same thing attests to this truth of
human nature. There are times when one has to wonder, in that given
situation, if they all saw the same event.
So many problems in this world of ours – and in this church of
ours, sadly – are the result of everyone not being on the same page,
which, again, is an impossibility. What makes all this even worse is
that at times we tend to demand that everyone think and act just as
we do, or we wonder why they do not. Yet, the truth is that we do
not demand this being of one mind from everyone. Come to a family
dinner at my brother’s home. By the time the meal is over you
sometimes may wonder if we are friends, let alone related.
Our differences are what make the world and our church go
around and what keep the world and our church in such an upheaval.
We need to accept these differences because they are God-given,
God-created. We are who we are. Yet we must not demand that others
be like us or think as we do. We simply need to make every attempt
to reconcile our differences and live together knowing that we
cannot and will not ever agree on every issue no matter how
important that issue.
We have to learn how to agree to disagree and then get on with
loving and living with one another in peace. That will never be easy
because of our often-ingrained beliefs that we are right and those
who disagree with us are not only wrong but, perhaps, sinners as
well. No one has a handle on the whole truth. No one. We all know
some of it but not all of it. We must be willing to live in peace
with one another. WJP
