Different Perspectives

One blessing of travel is the opportunity to see something common from another person's or another culture's point of view.

Passions are a part of any belief, and when the beliefs are discounted, slandered, or judged then it is easy for the passions to rise to the surface. The passions are within our control, and so are the words we choose are also within our control.

But also within our control is how we listen to another point-of-view. An example I often recall is in the closing chapters of the book by John Grisham, "A Time To Kill." The all-white jury is deliberating whether to convict or acquit the black defendant for killing the man who was accused of raping the defendant's young daughter. One juror asks the rest of the jury (in the film version, the defense attorney makes this plea) to re-create in the own mind the details of the rape, and then asks the jurors to imagine all of this horror happening to a young white girl rather than a young black girl. This ability to empathize with another perspective enables the jury to vote to acquit the father who was defending his little girl.

For those of us who have grown up with American traditions and judge other cultures against our own, we ought to ask something akin to the above example - what if it were our traditions and beliefs that are continually judged as wrong and unworthy of being followed by others - how would our passions be kindled?

Traveling has not changed my core values - I still consider myself in the conservative political spectrum, and consider myself a consevative Christian. But what has changed is that I now recognize that their other points-of-view out ehere, I am exceedingly blessed in ways that is humbling when I see the rest of the world, and that others may misundestand my points-of-view just as I might misunderstand theirs.

Our passions and our words need to be under our control. And we need to understand how it would be to be treated ourselves the way we sometimes treat our fellow Christians.

God bless