Over the weekend my daughter and I were discussing how people are no longer allowed to change their minds. Well of course, they can, and many do, but the world in general doesn’t like change. It may have to do with how many people can no longer think for themselves. Not that they don’t want to think for themselves but that they’ve lost the ability to do so. So many have gotten so used to doing whatever they are told, including what to think, they have lost faith in their own ability to reason.
Reason says there are things that happen of which we are aware and we can explain and we have to adapt to survive. Sometimes those are physical things. People who study the earth’s geological history know that even in the absence of man the earth is getting warmer. The sun is getting hotter, the earth’s orbit around the sun is changing, the speed of the earth’s rotation is changing, and instability deep within the earth the leads to volcanic eruptions continues. Just as the earth moved from its ice age to a state that can support human life it will someday move beyond that point to be uninhabitable by man. That doesn’t mean we don’t do what we can to lessen man’s impact. We can and should make changes, and many, many billions do make changes to preserve the environment. But we should not be so arrogant to think we’ll always have the climate we want and are comfortable with. We may have to change because the earth is certainly going to whether we believe it or not and that change is going to have an impact on us.
Reason also says there are things we cannot explain but they happen anyway. These are the changes we have a harder time with globally. Christians throughout the world recognize the power of change in the life of St. Paul of Tarsis who changed from persecutor of early Christians to one of Christianity’s greatest evangelists. His change was one taken on faith, hearing words heard by no one else. Arguments can be made that Paul saw that it was “better” that he serve the way of God rather than that of Caesar but then one has to make the argument for what constitutes better and how far one goes to make one’s point and no matter how you defend or attack those arguments it doesn’t change the fact that somebody changed his mind and in his mind the change was for what he considered better. He did not let what he was told earlier in his life prevent him from believing what he was told later. Regardless of what you believe, he believed and changed and that change made an impact in the world.
Over the last year we’ve heard what could be construed as conflicting reports on everything from what to use to wash your hands to how and when to wear your masks to whether it is safe to play sports and at what size does a gathering become a risk. That’s not to say that if we were told something – by experts – in October of 2020 that contradicts what we were told – by experts – in March 2020, that what was said earlier in the year was wrong. It means the experts learned something new about something that changed. Something became different, something that is measurable and addressable. You may not like that the virus mutated and that it might be best addressed by re-institution of isolation procedures but the mutation happened and just not believing is not an option. You can decide to not isolate but that won’t change that a mutation occured. And that others also probably will.
This is probably why, unless it has stood the test of a couple thousand years like the words of Paul, we should probably not “take as gospel” things we hear and may even ourselves say. But like Paul, we should recognize that even though we firmly believed something yesterday we can be open to believing something completely different tomorrow because whether you believe or not, the world will be different tomorrow.
Having a little faith in what you hear today, and believing in the change you make tomorrow, might make a big difference and have a great impact in your world.
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