Who's right?

I read this in another blog post this morning "When did we decide the church should dictate, control, or mandate the direction of our culture?" (http://www.leadingsmart.com/leadingsmart/2008/07/another-boycott.html) and thought who are we to say that we have it all "right" and everyone else is wrong?

I was having a conversation about something similar to this with my 8 year old the other day. She was questioning why other people call things by something different than what we do. In fact the specific item in question was a tortilla. In her mind anyway, that's what it was. In a classmates mind it was called something else. And my daughter just kept insisting that this classmate was wrong, despite how many different ways I was trying to explain it. Looking back on it now, it's pretty funny to me that we spent almost fifteen minutes discussing the difference between a tortilla and flat bread, only to come to the conclusion that it was the same thing.

But we all are guilty of doing this with our opinions, views and thoughts too many times. We think we are always right, that our rules are the ones that everyone should live by and that everyone else is wrong. If things don't go our way then we get upset, or we pout, or we retaliate. In some cases we even cut off those that need us the most.

We have to realize that there are many different personalities, views, backgrounds and experiences that go into making up a person and our society. We can not be so black and white in our judgments. The only authority that can do that (in my opinion) is God. You on the other hand may think differently. We have to accept the fact that there are gray areas, that there are times we will disagree, and that we are not all clones of one another. Otherwise we run the risk of alienating everyone and finding ourselves in a very lonely place.

We have to live our lives as we are called to live them. We don't have to condone a behavior that we disagree with, but we also don't have to force feed our views on someone else. We need to share with others in a loving and non-judgmental way, and lead by example. Then maybe people will be willing to listen and follow what we have to say.