more on the other hand

More on the other hand.

In Fiddler on the Roof, the main character, Rev Tevya, is talking with his daughter who has decided to marry a non-Jewish man. It is against his law and his view of what God wants. He keeps going through his thoughts saying, it is wrong, but she is happy. It is bad, but she is my daughter. He keeps looking at the other hand until finally he realizes that if he is to keep his view of God intact, there can be no other hand. And he rejects his daughter rather than admit that he could be wrong.

In Les Miserables, the law enforcement character believes that once a man is a criminal, he is always a criminal and can never change. He is faced with the main character who was a criminal and has changed into a good man. He cannot stand the disconnect inside him, so rather than admit that there can be an other hand, he kills himself.

There is always an other hand.

As Christians we tend to see things in black and white. These are the laws so I follow them. This is what God said, so therefore.

We see our view of Christianity as being right and everybody else’s as being wrong, and it is hard to have any kind of perspective on the matter.

Preachers are especially bad at this. Because they study so much by themselves, they have trouble seeing an alternative viewpoint. That is the value of reading. You read enough stuff and sooner or later, you realize that there are other sides to the issue. You see the other hand.

It was a shock to me to find out that the people who disagree with me on what I considered basic theological thoughts were intelligent, well-read, articulate people who also loved God. It was easy to demonize them as dishonest or people who had an agenda.

Those were words that people use about people that disagree with them. They would say, “Honest scholars believe…” or “Unless you have some kind of weird agenda, you will believe…”

What it comes down to is a reluctance to believe that there could be more than one side to what you are saying or thinking. Some of that may be laziness, some may be arrogance, some may just be ignorance.

But there is always an other side to the issue. It was hard for me to realize that, coming as I did out of a very conservative, somewhat isolated denomination that say their interpretation is the absolutely correct one. When I found out that there really could be other interpretations of scripture than the one I had, I had to leave the denomination.

I guess that has been my problem for the past few years. I found that there are other hands, other viewpoints, other interpretations. It is not that mine are wrong, or even badly thought out. I think they are fine and, in my opinion, Biblically thought out. But I do not stand supreme as the final arbiter of the will of God.

There is always an other hand.

By the way, there is a lot more pain in this article than is apparent to the casual reader. My discovery of the other hand has cost me my life denomination and the regard of my family who are in that denomination. Finding out that there is an other hand is painful and liberating at the same time.