Five Words that Could Transform America
It may sound simplistic but if all of us would just say and mean these five words it would have a profound impact on our world. The words are “BUT I COULD BE WRONG.” Just saying the words gives a sense of freedom and release. They mean I don’t have to be right, or defend what I believe, or judge what anyone else thinks or believes. Those words make me free to be me.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me we are trying to live like we hold absolutes in a world where they rarely exist. Outside of the natural order of the universe there are almost none. The sun comes up and sets on time each day but even the times vary depending on our location on the planet. The Tides rise and fall on schedule, but the depth depends on how far we are from the equator. Outside of the natural order of things what can we really know with certainty?
And yet our nation is divided by sides that think they are 100% correct and the other side is wrong by the same percentage.
The minute we began to hold absolutes, all thinking, logic, and creativity dies. The ability to hold a discussion or work together to solve a problem is lost. Loving our neighbor becomes dependent on which absolute the neighbor holds, and the slightest compromise becomes a “slippery slope” to be avoided like a plague. Slippery slopes scare us because they slide past the slogans we use to defend our positions and start requiring logic and logic destroys all absolutes.
There are no religious absolutes. Many of us were raised in a church that claimed what they taught was to be taken as an absolute truth without question, but what evidence was there to justify the demand?
No one has seen God in person so while believing is certainly possible and vitally important we cannot believe without the slightest doubt that God exists. I believe in life beyond life but don’t ask me to paint a picture of heaven. Faith is not the absence of doubt. Faith without doubt is presumption. Faith is decision and commitment to follow anyway doubts and all.
When someone proclaims their faith as if they have God’s unlisted phone number and are in constant verbal contact with the Divine it makes the rest of us feel like inferior spiritual peons.
When faith becomes dogma, loving one another is lost in a world of judging and trying not to be judged so we tend to fake it till we make it or give up and join the non-affiliated.
There are many political absurdities but no political absolutes. We have gone from Democrat to Republican administrations over and over and somehow survived. No political party is absolutely right. No political party is absolutely wrong. The danger is if one becomes convinced they are the only ones who are right and therefore they must remain in power at any cost and we lose the checks and balances that are vital.
There are no absolute answers to social problems. I may be wrong, but I do not think there is any way to absolutely prove that birth begins at conception, and there is no way to absolutely prove it does not so maybe it is time for us to lay aside our slogans and absolutes and reason together how this issue should be met and perhaps deal with helping avoid unwanted pregnancies instead of one more failed effort to legislate morality.
The only persons who know whether a homosexual or a transgender person is born as one or choses that lifestyle are the people who are actually involved. They know, the rest of us guess, and just because sex is involved does not make it the business of church, state, or me.
It is way past time for all of us to say the magic words “I could be wrong,” jump on our slippery slopes, and take a wonderful ride into the world of logical discussions. The longer I live the more I believe the test of intelligence is how many times we are willing to stop, consider and say, “What If I Am Wrong?”