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Respecting
the Faith of Others
By Daniel C. Peterson and William J. Hamblin
Years ago, while a graduate student in Egypt, one of
us was introduced by a friend to a chemistry professor at the University
of Cairo. After a pleasant conversation, the professor asked what
an American was doing in Egypt, studying Islam. “Are you a Muslim?”
he inquired. When he was told no, he asked, “Why not?”
Such a question is, of course, a bit sensitive and difficult
for anyone to answer who hopes to avoid offense or argument. So
the answer was, simply, “I’m a Christian.”
“Really?” replied the professor. “You believe that
God has a son (which, of course, everybody knows is completely impossible),
and that he sent his son to earth and arranged to have him killed
in order to buy himself off?” The graduate student said that, while
that was not exactly how he would have phrased it, he did in fact
believe something along those lines. “Amazing!” exclaimed the Muslim
professor. “How can any intelligent person possibly believe anything
so obviously crazy?”
The graduate student, now a professor himself, has reflected
on that experience many times since. The fact is, that however
strange it may appear to a Muslim scientist (or to any other outsider),
many people of extraordinary intelligence have been and continue
to be believing Christians. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Pascal,
Kierkegaard, and C. S. Lewis are just a few who come to mind. And
this is true of other faiths, as well. Brilliant men and women
can be counted among the writers and thinkers of Islam, Judaism,
Buddhism, Hinduism, and all the great religions of human history.
Undoubtedly, of course, there are also uninformed people
in every movement who believe on the basis of bad reasons or no
reasons at all. But, while insignificant and transient religious
movements might draw their ranks largely from the unbalanced or
the ignorant, every religious or ideological group that has appealed
to large numbers over extended periods of time has contained elements
that satisfied and seemed plausible to sensitive, intelligent, sane
men and women. Otherwise, it is simply inconceivable that such
religions could have survived for any lengthy period.
An Insight
This leads to an insight: If you encounter a religious
group or an ideology that has attracted many people of diverse backgrounds
for a considerable length of time, and you cannot see “how any intelligent
person can possibly believe anything so manifestly crazy,” the problem
is probably in you—at least as much as it is in the other person.
You don’t know or understand enough to make a judgment, for intelligent
people undoubtedly do believe it. So long as you imagine that no
“intelligent” person could honestly fall for such nonsense, you
dehumanize those you disagree with. Or, if they are manifestly
knowledgeable, you assume (and this is very common) that they are
all, somehow, dishonest.
It isn’t necessary, in considering another system of
beliefs, to accept it. But it is necessary, if you truly want to
understand it, to try to imagine how someone else could believe
it, could find it emotionally appealing and intellectually satisfying.
Because of the nature of the claims of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, members of that Church should
be especially aware of this principle. However gently we may affirm
our beliefs, they do unavoidably put us into something of an adversarial
relationship with the religious positions held by the majority of
those around us—something that those hostile to the Church have
certainly noticed and seldom fail to emphasize.
Critics
often publicly wonder how any honest, intelligent person can believe
in the Book of Mormon, the visitation of God and angels to Joseph
Smith, or the divine potential of humankind. Yet, although their
honesty and intelligence are frequently questioned by anti-Mormon
crusaders, many such people do exist, some of them quite well-informed.
On the other side, not a few Latter-day Saints vocally marvel that
anybody who knows anything could be (for example) a Catholic, and
cannot see how sane, intelligent people can possibly swallow doctrines
like the Trinity. But the fact is indisputable: Many of the most
brilliant thinkers in the history of Western civilization have been
devout Roman Catholics, and, of these, many have written on precisely
the issue of the Trinity.
In the interreligious discussions and, yes, arguments
that ensue from time to time from the sheer fact that we are Latter-day
Saints and that the vast majority of the world is not, it would
help if each side could grant the other to be, on the whole, sincere,
honest, intelligent, and sane.
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