How do you hold beliefs that are vastly different than your own?

 What happens when a complete stranger sits down next to you and starts to speak to you “about Jesus?”

What do you do if you hear about a way of viewing the world that is far different from your own view?   

What do you do when you feel your view is the correct one?

Do you try to convince the other of your “correct view?”

Do you enter a dialog, exchanging ideas, so that you both have an opportunity to see through a different lens?   Is there an opportunity here for adopting a different lensing system? 

Do you first listen carefully, and decide whether this person speaks dogmatically? 

If they are fundamentalist in their thinking, then a true exchange of ideas is less likely to take place. 

When you have a fixed single lens, there is much less opportunity for change, much less opportunity for seeing through a different lens. 

 

Nonetheless, perhaps, it pays to plant seeds.  Perhaps only a few choice words, said with love and compassion. 

That seed might remain dormant, forever. 

Perhaps the seed will sprout in the future. 

Perhaps we were the one who received the seed.  Perhaps within us a new lens will sprout and grow, and we will be different then we were before. 

Seeing ever more clearly.