Us/Them

Things I have learned about myself recently:

I am much less inclined than I used to be to see others who believe differently as outsiders, or to define “my” group as those who express their beliefs in a way very similar to me. At the same time, I seem to identify strongly with people who may have belief expressions very different from my own, but have core motivations/intentions very similar to mine, such as a Christ-like adherent of another faith.

I really don’t think I value defined teacher/disciple relationships as much as I value collaborative/partnership relationships where teaching and learning are taking place. Likewise, I think the most appropriate understanding of Jesus' call to "make disciples" is to facilitate others becoming students of Jesus.

The relationships I value the most are those where enough similarity exists to facilitate understanding, but enough difference exists to both keep me challenged and where I believe I have something to contribute.

Seems to me to be a good place to be, but I wonder if some in my own faith community would be comfortable with all this. I certainly hope so, but I suspect the reaction would be mixed.

Mature?

Today my sister in law referred to me as an "older man".  I got quite a kick out of feigning offence, but she was on to me.  I'm pretty predictable.  This made me think about maturity -- mostly, how I lack it.  I was running this same thought through my noggin earlier this week.  It's funny that every generation seems to see itself as having "arrived".  Along the lines of, "Can you believe they thought that way back then?  Sure is a good thing our culture grew out of that!"  This shows up in science, religion, medicine, social understanding, politics, etc.  I wonder how advanced Civil War surgeons thought their techniques were in the late 1800's compared to the middle ages.  We assume that we have most everything arranged properly, even though history proves consistent progress and growth.  If we are part of that continuum (exclude the "imminent rapture" folks), then we certainly should admit that 100 years from now (or 20 ... or 10), folks will look back on our own outdated and backward way of understanding the world in 2010 and remark, "Can you believe they thought that way back then?  Sure is a good thing our culture grew out of that!"

I know some will argue that the older ways of understanding the world were better.  Perhaps there is some truth in this, but on the whole, I don't think that dialing the clock back significantly raises understanding.  People made strong and (to them) compelling arguments that slavery in the US was justified.  Folks with emotional or brain-chemical imbalance were committed to prisons.  Suspected witches were burned.

This all makes me think that we should approach our current levels of knowledge and understanding with generous amounts of humility.  It could all be outdated before we assume room temperature.