The Baby in the Bath

No one interprets things the same way. We all have a past and that past directly influences our outlook on the present. Its not a negative thing, it's reality, and knowing how other people's past influence their perception is imperative because it helps us to 'correct' our perception where we need to. The key really is finding a middle ground.

But this is much easier said than done, not only because we are human and see what we want to but also because without a reference point we don't know where the middle ground is. It's fine to bridge the gap between two people, but what do you do when there are 5 or 6 people in a community who have different ideas? At this point finding a middle ground becomes somewhat lopsided.

And this is where 'Absolute Truth' comes into play. Now, Absolute Truth is an extremely tricky topic, and I could probably write an entire book about how I perceive it to work, and where it comes into play, and how it is moulded versus what it actually is and about a thousand other things, but I try to keep my blogs between one and two pages so we won't go there just yet.

But I will say that if we are to bridge the gap between people we need a truth, even if it isn't Absolute Truth, to use as a reference point. So, problem solved. No, you see everyone has a different interpretation of the 'truth' in question, and very few of the people are going to be right. Sure they will agree on the basics in most cases, but there will always be details that will be debated over until the cows come home.

Take for example programming. You can give four programmers the same objective and they will all go about achieving those objectives in completely different ways. Sure the basics will be the same but the actual execution of knowledge will differ. As long as all the parties have the basics nailed, no one will be wrong.

This same concept applies to anything, including Christianity. There is however one major problem with Christianity in my opinion. The bar is far to low. Modern day Christianity requires people to have 'faith' and that's it. No one needs to have any reasons, just faith. This means that while people believe they have the basics, they actually don't. And this leads to much bigger problems, like misinterpretation of doctrine and a misunderstanding of faith. In some cases people don't even know what being a Christian actually requires.

But the problem isn't that people are idiots, or that they are lazy or anything else like that. The problem is that people dismiss things they don't entirely understand as being meaningless in favor of 'blind faith', and by doing so they throw the baby out with the bathwater.

You see, faith is meaningless without action, but if you don't understand what is required you'll never know what action to take, thereby making your faith meaningless too.

Now you may be saying, "Well this man is an intellectual person and he is going to take things further than they need to be taken", and that is true to some extent but there has to be a middle ground. I'm willing to have more faith if you're willing to do some thinking, and that's what the world needs. Some people to sit down and use their brains..