Children Arguing In The Playground
There are three children playing happily on the playground. One of them has a one dollar bill. The second has a five dollar bill, and the third has a ten dollar bill. They decide to pool their money."Well," says the first child, "if we put all our money together, we would have a total of $14.00!"
"No," says the second. "I'm pretty sure we would have $15.00!"
And the third exclaims, "No, no! You're both wrong! It's $16.00!"
So the children begin to argue. Soon they are throwing gravel in each other's faces, and kicking one another in the shins. Because, after all, children care very deeply about such things.
Enter, stage left, the children's math teacher. "Oh," he says. "We seem to have a difference of opinion here. Let's see if we can work this out."
So he has each of his children stand in front of the math class and present their explanation. The children listen, and they wax eloquent, in their attempt to convince the others that their way is right. Carefully the class weighs the facts, evaluating each argument and explanation. And when they are done, hopefully the class is better able to evaluate what is right, and what is wrong.
Now, this is not necessarily a bad approach, although you do run the risk of confusing the children even further. But the teacher might take this risk for the sake of the hope that the exercise might clarify instead of confuse the issue.
BUT, the teacher does not say to the students "Oh, let us take a week to celebrate the diversity of our different ways of solving this problem. Let us, on Monday, all do mathematical excercises according to the methods of Student A, and on Tuesday according the methods of Student B...and so forth."
This method serves to confuse the students, but it does far more damage than simply confusing the students. It also causes them to view mathematics as irrelevent, absurd, and unknowable. The teacher has, in essence, said, "We can each have our own method of solving the problem, and no one method (and therefore, no one answer) is correct." The teacher is teaching a viewpoint called pluralism, in which no single viewpoint (except, presumably, pluralism itself!) has a corner on the market of truth. For most, this actually translates to meaning that truth is not just unknowable, but irrelevent.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, apparently every summer there is a festival held called the "Interreligious Peace Sports Festival". The notion is to get people of different faiths together to play sports, as a way of promoting peace. Is this a good thing? Or a bad thing?
Well, I think it depends on both the actual intent of the festival, and how it is accomplished. For example, encouraging people of different faiths to live in peace is not a bad thing. Just as children who disagree on how to add numbers can still play peacefully together, so people of different faiths can live, work, and play together in peace. In fact, we are instructed in Romans 12:18: If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.
And the festival may have been established with exactly that intent. But I have my doubts. There is something much deeper going on here, which is potentially as dangerous as the "diversity celebration" of the math teacher. This is a second hand description of part of the festival:
Every night there is a presentation by one of the religions, and everyone is encouraged to participate in the prayer/meditation of that religion. You will sightsee and participate in work projects in mixed groups as well. The organizers hope that by working and playing and competing with people that have different faiths, the participants will learn how to respect and accept the faiths that are present around the world.
Some of that isn't bad. I wouldn't mind going siteseeing and working side by side with people of other faiths. But...
"participate in the prayer/meditation of that religion"? "accept the faiths"? What exactly does that mean? Can we have a definition of "accept"? "Accept" is a nice "pluralistic" word which you will hear pluralists use all the time, but you'll have a tough time getting them to pin down a definition, because the word by itself sounds much nicer, much more touchy-feely, than the actual meaning. When the pluralist says he wants you to "accept" what he means is, "to believe that his view is every bit as good as yours".
In other words, the pluralist is demanding that you become a pluralist also.
The only winners in a festival like this are the faiths like Ba'hai and Buddhism which are, by nature, pluralistic. Faiths like Islam, Judaism, and Christianity will always be outsiders in a festival like this because those who truly follow these faiths follow them because we believe that our faiths do not just contain some truth, but are Truth, with a capital T. And just as the children on the playground each believe that their answer is True, we cling to our faith because we are not pluralists. In the case of Christians, we listen to the words of Jesus who said, "I am THE Way, THE Truth, and THE life, no man comes to the Father except through me," and we say, "Wow! We sure are narrow minded, aren't we?"
No, we aren't narrow minded. We just aren't pluralists.
Posted On Dec 2, 2005 at 11:09 AM
On Dec 2, 2005 Beth wrote: When I was first presented with that question for class, those were my initial thoughts (what you summed up in this post). The "I am the way, the truth, and the light" verse immediately came to mind. The points that were made FOR going to this sports/peace conference (sponsored by the Unification Church in Korea, hosts many different kinds of religions) were a) it would be a great opportunity to learn the religions around us and see the best ways we could minister to them, and B) it's a conference about "peace," and it would be a shame if Christ wasn't represented. But like the comment Laura F. left for me said, I think there are more appropriate ways to do so. By going you really are showing a pluaralistic attitude.
ps I did read the Dragon story too. Thanks for your thoughts
Doug Replied: yep...I saw Laura's comment she left for you, and agreed with that as well.
That's an interesting point, about having a conference about peace, without the Prince of Peace...
I don't have any thoughts on that at the moment, so I'll leave it at that, and see if anyone else wants to make any comments.
On Dec 5, 2005 Trent wrote: From the title I thought Brian, you, and I were having a fight that I didn't know about.
Doug Replied: Oh Yeah? Wanna Fight About It???
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