dogma

I'm much more dogmatic than I would like to believe, and much more intolerant than I would like to believe. That's something I've been noticing lately. The irony for me is that tolerance and ambiguity are things that I value a lot. And I am tolerant, in some ways, but I'm basically tolerant to people who are like me.

Over spring break, I sat in on a session at my friend's old Bible school. At the end of the session, the speaker challenged the students to live a certain way, and asked for people to stand to show their commitment and willingness to accept the challenge. Getting people to stand up as a sign of commitment is something that I've resented since I was around 13. Anyway, I realized in that moment that I had a lot more love and compassion and even respect for the people that chose to stay seated rather than the ones who were standing.

I have a lot of understanding for the people that are like me, for the skeptics and questioners and lamewads, for the quitters and the apostates and for people who leave the faith and who are uncertain about the truth. I don't have much respect for believers who never question and who believe they know truth.

I'm intolerant of those who believe they know the truth, the ones who are certain about what is good and what is wrong, the ones who are certain about how they should live and about who God is and what the Bible says and what the Bible is. And this intolerance scares me. It scares me that when I encounter the people that I resent the most, I begin to express the attributes of theirs that I find the most repelling.

I need to let go of my beliefs just as much as I'm asking others to let go of their beliefs. More importantly, I need to let go of being right. The flip side is that I need to start telling my story, in the sense that I'm relating where I'm at and why I'm there.