Adults, We Don’t Have to Agree.

My faith has grown a lot over the years, and I hope that it keeps growing as I continue to mature. We all grow up with ideas about how life works. As we grow, we learn that some of them are right (don’t touch fire, because it burns), some are wrong (Santa brings us presents…

Written by

Randall J. Greene

Published on

Go BackChristianity

My faith has grown a lot over the years, and I hope that it keeps growing as I continue to mature.

We all grow up with ideas about how life works. As we grow, we learn that some of them are right (don’t touch fire, because it burns), some are wrong (Santa brings us presents on Christmas), and some are simply matters of opinion (sauerkraut is nasty). Part of being a mature adult is having the ability to challenge – and find answers for – those assumptions.

Being able to have truly open discussions about life questions is crucial to growing and learning.

The key word in that sentence is “open.” We Christians (particularly evangelicals) love to talk about the hot topics in our social circles. We love making sure everyone knows exactly where we stand on abortion, creation, and homosexuality. The problem is that we are unwilling to concede that our views could possibly be wrong.

When we approach the conversation in this way, we are behaving like a child who, upon being told that Santa isn’t real, puts his hands over his ears and shouts “I’m not listening to you! Santa IS real!”

If we are mature in our faith, we have to be able to approach these conversations with the mindset that we COULD be wrong in what we believe. That’s not to say that we definitely are wrong – but we must be able to admit that the possibility exists.

Aristotle summed my thoughts up well. He said:

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.