This subject, about which I have thought for many years, was stimulated by a recent Pew Research Center study referenced in an article entitled Americans Are More Likely to Like Muslims if They Know One. The research report from Pew referenced in the article is HERE.
If I take the time to really know new people, and if I am looking with unconditional love—even through the lenses of my ingrained cultural and religious prejudices or preferences—I am probably going to like them. I may not like everything about them, but I will probably like them.
Out of my daily journey to be more Christ-like I definitely consider them persons of worth created in the image of God to live and love. At their core they are persons of great value in God’s sight. As such I strive to discover that which is good, loving, and compatible with my life situation. I want to like them, and I desire that they like me.
That is a principle I can apply not only to Muslims, but to atheists, people with tattoos and piercings, people of different political parties, people who pull for the wrong sports teams, people with various addictions, narrow-minded people with regressive and reactionary views, warmed over pseudo-intellectual liberals from the 1960s, people who have committed multiple crimes, news broadcasters who apparently stretch the truth to make themselves larger than life, cohabitating couples, LGBT persons, persons from a cultural background I do not appreciate, really loud people, radicals or fundamentalists of various types and persuasions, and so many other categories not mentioned.
The Challenge
When I truly get to know these people it simultaneously clears and blurs my vision.
When I get to know these people deeper than at a surface level, more often than not, I like them. I learn to appreciate their perspective. But, at times it does not stop there.
I clearly see them both on the surface and in-depth. I may discover they are even more genuine about their life values—whether or not I agree with those values—than I claim to be. I may not agree with either their values or some of their actions, but I understand them more clearly than just taking verbal shots from afar at the positions they espouse.
I may discover they have a reasonable set of principles that support their values and actions.
Simultaneously it blurs my vision. It colors my perspective of them. In those areas where values or practices are wrong in my eyes—even harmful—I may overlook these because they are now my friends. Rather than being honest with them, they are now my friends. Rather than keeping them from doing something that harms them and others, they are now my friends.
Sin?
If anything they are doing seems—without untoward subjective judgment on my part—to fit the category we Christians call “sin”, they are now my friends. When this happens I wonder if I have truly been their friend if I am unable to tell them what I consider to be hard truth.
Do I want to see myself as liberated from judging others? Do I want to suggest that since they are my friends I no longer consider things they do that are harmful to themselves or others as “sin”? Is my need to be liked and to show how progressive I am so important to me that I move the barometer that measures my values and convictions?
Do I need to go back and read once again the 1973 book by Karl Menninger entitled Whatever Became of Sin?
Do I go to the written Word of God—the Bible—and say I now understand it did not mean that which my friends are doing? Or, I can’t let it mean that anymore because they are my friends? Or, maybe I do need to grow into a new understanding of how the written and living Word of God involving unconditional love needs to be applied to this post-modern era.
How about you? How do you handle the diversity and richness present in others who approach life with a different perspective than yours? Do you modify long-term values and principles so you can affirm them? Do you hold fast to your values and principles without compromise? Does your sight become clearer or blurred?