March, 2007 ~ Something to Think About
I grew up in a culture where “wise sayings” (also known as “proverbial sayings” and “platitudes”) were a common part of the language. Sayings like “a stitch in time saves nine” and “never put off till tomorrow what you can do today” and, oh yes, “anything worth doing is worth doing well.” Every so often one of these sayings pops into my mind and shakes its finger at me! This happened recently and I found myself thinking about the meaning of “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Now, that is not a complicated proverb. As I get it, the fundamental meaning is something like this: if I sock you in the eye for no apparent reason and you respond by socking me in the eye, for what looks like a good reason… nothing is solved. Each of us has a black eye and neither of us has addressed the anger that prompted both of them!
As I thought about how often we see this played out at home and on the world scene, it suddenly occurred to me that the proverb could be reversed and still contain an important message. Here’s what it becomes: “Two rights don’t make a wrong.” Perhaps it is this version of the proverb that most clearly speaks to the world scene. Let’s apply it to religion, although it could be applied to forms of government or any other important life arena.
Suppose I have a religion that is “right” for me and I decide that because it is “right” for me, it must be “right” for everybody. But you already have a religion that is “right” for you and you see no reason why yours is not “right” for everyone. Here we are… with two “rights!” Because we are encultured to think comparatively about things that differ, we say, “If I have a religion and you have a different religion… they can’t both be right… one of them has to be wrong.” And we set about the task of converting each other instead of understanding that “two rights don’t make (or require) a wrong!”
For the most part, we don’t struggle with people having differing careers or kinds of houses or models of cars, but things that we value deeply tend to come up for comparison. For a long time, the role of male and female fell into this thinking… some things were “right” for men to do and be and some things were “right” for women. We’ve come a long way with this, but it still exists in regard to sexual identity and what does and does not constitute “marriage.”
Am I saying there are no “rights” and “wrongs?” No. Any kind of abuse that one person inflicts on another person (or any living being) is “wrong.” My point is this: something is not “wrong” just because it is different. It is possible to have a healthy world of co-existing “rights” when we live according to spiritual law in the same way that it is possible to produce music from the differing tones played by an orchestra, when the tones are in alignment with the laws of harmony. Call it Oneness. Call it Wholeness. Call it Unity.
Something to think about.
jbm
As I thought about how often we see this played out at home and on the world scene, it suddenly occurred to me that the proverb could be reversed and still contain an important message. Here’s what it becomes: “Two rights don’t make a wrong.” Perhaps it is this version of the proverb that most clearly speaks to the world scene. Let’s apply it to religion, although it could be applied to forms of government or any other important life arena.
Suppose I have a religion that is “right” for me and I decide that because it is “right” for me, it must be “right” for everybody. But you already have a religion that is “right” for you and you see no reason why yours is not “right” for everyone. Here we are… with two “rights!” Because we are encultured to think comparatively about things that differ, we say, “If I have a religion and you have a different religion… they can’t both be right… one of them has to be wrong.” And we set about the task of converting each other instead of understanding that “two rights don’t make (or require) a wrong!”
For the most part, we don’t struggle with people having differing careers or kinds of houses or models of cars, but things that we value deeply tend to come up for comparison. For a long time, the role of male and female fell into this thinking… some things were “right” for men to do and be and some things were “right” for women. We’ve come a long way with this, but it still exists in regard to sexual identity and what does and does not constitute “marriage.”
Am I saying there are no “rights” and “wrongs?” No. Any kind of abuse that one person inflicts on another person (or any living being) is “wrong.” My point is this: something is not “wrong” just because it is different. It is possible to have a healthy world of co-existing “rights” when we live according to spiritual law in the same way that it is possible to produce music from the differing tones played by an orchestra, when the tones are in alignment with the laws of harmony. Call it Oneness. Call it Wholeness. Call it Unity.
Something to think about.
jbm
