Anyway, there is a section when Lily (Walls' grandmother) is speaking with her daughter, Rosemary, when she's six years old. They've recently moved to a remote corner of Arizona for Lily to earn extra spending money as a teacher. Apart from their family, the vast majority of people in this small decrepit "town" were Mormon polygamists who had moved into seclusion to avoid government harassment. Rosemary expressed fascination with the family life of the Mormons, and asked many questions about their lives. I was especially struck by this bit of conversation:
"That's what they believe," I told her, "but that doesn't mean it's true."
"Then why do they believe it?"
"America is a free country," I said. "And that means people are free to believe whatever cockamamie thing they want to believe."
"So they don't have to believe it if they don't want to?" Rosemary asked.
"No, they don't."
"But do they know that?"
...
That, I came to see, was the heart of the matter. You were free to choose enslavement, but the choice was a free one only if you knew what your alternatives were.
Being the mother of a wide-eyed, impressionable almost-four-year-old, the aunt of a wide-eyed, impressionable nine- and two- year old, and a part of the lives of several other wide-eyed, impressionable types, I really like this bit of text. It makes me really think about what my responsibilities are to the people who have awarded me with their trust.
How do I stay true to the beliefs that I've come to adopt as my own, while also presenting all aspects of the realities that others have chosen for themselves in a way that's fair and loving? I feel pretty strongly that the business of faith, religion, politics, ethics, and whatever other hot-button type topics are so controversial cannot be adequately explained or explored if my goal is merely to convince. A friend of mine said it well when he noted, "If I can convince somebody to believe in something, then someone else can just as easily convince them out of it." Inasmuch as I am a talker, being all-talk is not helpful.
What, then, is our responsibility? When does it become time to let go of that responsibility, with the awareness that someone else (perhaps the person we're talking with, him/herself, even) must take over where we've left off? When are we crossing a line? When do we more harm than good in trying to convey our own set of beliefs? When is our quest to share faith/politics/what have you more for selfish motives than because we truly want to help a person seek, discern, understand, and believe? And, perhaps the toughest question of all, how do we deal if and when a person that we love, upon exploring all sorts of belief systems--including our own--arrives at a completely, and mutually exclusive set of their own beliefs?
If we take a look at the answers to those questions have revealed themselves most prominently in society, it's quite disheartening. Here are some observations:
1. In general, the tendency is to feel a greater responsibility to talk people into believing what we do, than there is a responsibility to speaking intelligently about the entire spectrum of beliefs. However, as was noted in the book, your freedom to choose is only free if you know the alternatives. And, furthermore, your beliefs can only be tested when they are held in tension with those that oppose them. And your beliefs cannot be rock solid and unshakeable unless they are tested. Of course, even as I write this, I'm aware that it's an expression of my own set of beliefs.
2. There are a lot of people who hate other people because their beliefs are different. Frequently, this is true even when they haven't taken the time to find out how those beliefs differ.
3. Labels can destroy our ability to develop lasting friendships with people. We may not treat each other with animosity, but we certainly miss out on lots of opportunities because of the pre-conceived notions that we have when we hear "Republican" or "Democrat" or "Muslim" or "Christian" or "Home-Schooled" or "Gay."
4. We are horribly underqualified, in many cases, to speak authoritatively about our own set of beliefs and even moreso, to speak about other sets of beliefs.
5. We are afraid to admit we're wrong. Ever.
6. We are afraid (perhaps even moreso) to admit that there are lots and lots and lots of areas that need not be "gray" or "different" because, in reality, we agree. We use similarity as evidence that one line of thought cannot be true, and we use difference to prove our point that "we're right and you're wrong".
7. An unbelievable number of people have died because they believed something different. Or, at least, because it was assumed that they did. Sometimes I wonder how many non-American Muslims were killed or injured on 9/11 because they were at work in the WTC. (Not that they would've agreed with the motives behind the attackers, but they probably wouldn't have been in the line of fire, either.)
8. We justify feelings of animosity when we disagree, but we still like to pretend that we're the "better people." In general, people are more guarded around people with known differences because we trust them less. We often regard them as misguided, a product of poor circumstances, lost, stupid, attention-seeking or as people who hate us because we are right and they don't like that.
9. Lots of panel discussions are held with the idea that various opinions and perspectives can be heard, but folks rarely walk out afterward thinking that they needed to change their thinking.
10. We believe that, because so many people have different beliefs, that there cannot possibly be one truth. We hardly ever entertain the notion that, in fact, we're all right about some stuff, we're all wrong about some stuff, and that, though the singular truth will be revealed at some point, the best that any of us can do is to keep learning, growing, seeking and, yes, even changing, questioning, doubting and tweaking.
I think that it would be an interesting project to have people engage in a debate wherein they were required to defend a belief system that, in reality, was not their own. What might we learn from such a task?
Now, I want to make something clear here: none of what I've said to this point is meant to suggest that we remain eternally wishy washy in our beliefs. Rather, we need to continually educate ourselves in ways that will allow us to tweak--or affirm--or debunk whatever it is that we have come to adopt. There is no such thing as a healthy set of beliefs that is also stagnant; this is a process that must be dynamic. Otherwise, we come across as arrogant and ridiculous because, well, we are arrogant and ridiculous.
Republicans don't have to become Democrats. Christians don't have to abandon their belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. But, perhaps we should reevaluate what we really know about all of the other things that are out there. And, no matter what the results are, we would really do ourselves--and everyone--a favor if we could just figure out how to love people...no matter what they think.
