To Respect Those We Think Are Wrong

In Elders' Quorum today, we were talking about how to be peacemakers, and specifically how we can make peace with the people who disagree with us. To that end, I think that respect and empathy go a long way. Part of that includes trying to understand their perspective, just as we try to help them understand ours. Naturally, we want them to understand that we believe that life begins at conception and that all human lives are sacred, not to be discarded on a whim. But if we're going to have productive conversations with those on the other side of the debate, we also need to recognize that many people don't consider embryos full individuals until later in their development, and their hearts go out to the usually young women who are often not ready to be mothers and who would not be able to provide stable homes for their children. It's all well and good to try to calmly explain our position, but we should try to understand theirs as well.

That's why I cringed a bit when I heard the other elders talking about the importance of defending the truths we hold dear. Not everyone agrees on what the truth is. Other people also have truths that they want us to respect, including truths that we call falsehoods, just as they question the validity of our truths. If our aim is have peaceful relationships with the people we disagree with, it's probably best not to start (or even continue) arguments about who's right and who's wrong. Rather, I think the best we can do is to agree to disagree on certain topics and to try to maintain mutual respect, empathy, and love.

We won't always agree with each other about what is true or what should be allowed or forbidden. But those disagreements don't have to cause arguments. We can learn to live peacefully with people we think are misguided sinners, just as they can learn to live peacefully with us delusional religious folk. We don't have to be enemies just because we think each other are wrong. We can try to respect each other's beliefs and decisions, acknowledging that each of us has agency, including the agency to choose what we believe, what evidence we accept, and how we interpret the evidence with which we are presented. We don't have to try to tear down or criticize each other's beliefs. Rather, we can learn to accept our differences of opinion and behavior and to respect each other anyway.