Understanding One Another

Recently, I was reading one theologian's critique of another's ideas concerning a very intriguing topic which many postmoderns can readily identify with (I won't mention the topic so as to stay on the point I want to address).

At the beginning of my faith journey, at that point where I became aware of the idea that there could possibly be something going on beyond my own existential purview, I entered the Christian faith with a fairly sizable naivete. I assumed that there was Christianity, period, and not the multifarious religious scene I have now become quite adept to. While it didn't take me too long to figure out that there were many expressions of this faith that could be adopted, I had already fallen into the trap that there was only one valid take on the matter. This produced not only grief in my own spiritual development, but in those of others in my midst as well.

From this newly conceived and appropriated notion, issued a multitude of possibilities. Before I knew it, even though my own particularized conception of faith in Jesus Christ was still in its infant form, I was being challenged to rethink several of the stances I had already assimmilated from the specific tradition of Christianity I was already familiar with. I now realized I had a new problem: what appeared to be true at first glance was now open to serious scrutiny by many others bearing the name of Jesus, along with my own new questions that were popping up within my own mind.

Back to the theologians. I think that because I have now traversed much of the expansive perspectival divide (which seems to be still growing as far as I can tell) in terms of how Christianity is seen and lived out by so many with "competing" views, I can also now better sense when two theologians are discussing opposing points and are doing so without even considering that they may not be speaking the same language in terms of the meanings they are pouring into their words and then, subsequently, attempting to convey their very precise and nuanced ideas. And so they both go back and forth, back and forth, to no discernable or profitable end as best as I can tell (except, perhaps, in their own eyes).

Isn't this something all of us Christians, or, more broadly speaking, humans do on a regular basis with one another? How often do we stop to think about the real likelihood that we are not all as universally or generically situated in light of the many contributing and influencial forces that help in determining, at least in a parial way, what we are becoming like in very discriminate ways? I wanted to, somehow, sit these two people down and offer them what little perspective I might be able to (at least try to help them to see a little more cleary that which their own very specific disciplines wouldn't let them see) on how they might be misunderstanding one another from an outsider's point of view. Then, at least, their arguing might produce more intellegible results for those attempting to take in what they were attempting to communicate to each other.

Through this incident, I find that I myelf need to make more concerted efforts which are necessary in not only trying to communicate more cleary with others, but also to really give them my focused attention while at the same time remembering that there is so much more involved than meets the eye to the persons they already are in themselves. Have you experienced this kind of relational awakening before with the attending humility (or embarrassment) it produces?