Date Night (Tina Fey & Steve Carell)

I CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS MOVIE TO COME OUT!

Reflections on why we believe what we believe or do what we do.

I told a friend of mine the other day that I’ve noticed in myself a tendency to be less forgiving towards what I am most familiar with (my own heritage/context/upbringing), and more forgiving towards what is alien to me. Meaning, as a Christian, I tend to be harder on Christians and religious people, than towards atheists. I know my kind better, so I am better acquainted with all the ways we screw things up. But I have to be able to identify why I’m prejudiced in this way, in order to not just rebel against something because I know it and its flaws better–due to overexposure–or embrace something different because I know little about it or its flaws–due to underexposure.

Others, might err in the reverse. They might be more forgiving towards their own kind, and less towards those they are unfamiliar with. Perhaps, this is because they are comforted by familiarity, even with all the flaws one can observe from such a close proximity, and they will defend what is familiar at any cost–unconditionally, so to speak. Or, perhaps, out of a sense of loyalty to the familiar, they ignore these flaws, or are blind to them.

Regardless, a lot of people’s ideologies seem to be either in defense of their heritage/context/upbringing or a reaction against it. They’re Christians because their parents were, or because their parents weren’t. They’re atheists because their parents were, or because their parents weren’t. They’re teetotalers because their parents were, or because their parents weren’t. They’re either conservatives in defense of what’s familiar to them, or conservatives in rebellion against liberalism because that’s what’s familiar (and vice versa). They are either blinded by loyalty to the familiar, or blinded by rage for the familiar.

You see this a lot in those transition years between dependence on parents and independence from parents, in other words: adolescence (between childhood and adulthood). Many adolescents react to this transition by either accepting the ideologies close at hand without discretion (unable to think for themselves, only what they were told), or they react against what is close at hand by switching to opposite ideologies. I’m encouraging neither. And I’ve seen many adolescents successfully do neither. But…

I find that few people have good reasons to believe what they believe or to live the way they live, because they are too lazy to do anything besides simply accept the status quo or just reject it all together–and throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. I’ve known this to be true both in churches and in bars. When will we evolve past this defensive attitude for what is familiar or reactionary tendencies towards what is familiar and do our best to do the tedious work of real evaluation? Not in spite of our heritages/contexts/upbringings or in loyalty to them but with them working like yeast in rising bread, causing either negative or positive starting points–not negative or positive FINAL points. As in: because of my Christian context, I can take certain positive things from my faith and be launched forward by them, and I can take certain negative things I have experienced and learn from them (and be a different kind of Christian). I won’t accept the status quo of Christianity. But I won’t throw in the towel on it either. This is just an example. I think it applies to a lot of areas of our lives, such as: relationships, jobs, dealing with regret.

When you rid yourself of baggage, it’s still best to take what you learned from it with you, if not the thing itself. Sort of like the saying: take the good, leave the bad. You don’t have to keep the bad, but you don’t have to forget the good either. I’ve been in relationships that were bad enough to leave, but not bad enough to regret all together. We left the youth ministry. That decision had to be made. But just because the situation was such that a decision had to be made, doesn’t mean for a second that I regret having been there in the first place (even if in the end we had to leave). And if I could, I wouldn’t go back in time and never have been in those relationships, or never have taken that job.

On a kind of random side note: This is why I think time travel movies are stupid… In most time travel movies, people want to get back into the past and change it, when really they should have just learn from it. If they don’t learn from it, no matter what they change, it always blows up in their faces. I’m NOT saying accept the past. But the answer isn’t changing it. It’s learning from it. We create a false dichotomy by pretending there are only two options–ignore or blow up. What about thoughtfully working your way through a situation? Ever thought of  that, time travelers? End side note.

There’s nothing wrong with being influenced by ones upbringing, for better or for worse. Let it teach you. Let it warn you. Let it scare you. But prune, people!Don’t just chop down. And don’t just let it grow wild. Prune! If what you’re familiar with is full of holes, then plug the holes. You don’t have to demolish the wall. And even if you do, you don’t have to forget what that faulty wall taught you. And if everything seems swell, don’t be cynical, but don’t be foolish, either. Question it. Look behind the curtain. Don’t take the lazy way out and simply reject or accept out of pure ignorance–or lack of curiosity.

I heard this somewhere, and I think it’s a great principle to live by: “don’t believe everything, but don’t doubt everything, either.” (something like that)