In the wake of some recent events I'm feeling the need to say something lately, that I've reiterated a number of times before...
I hold to certain principles. They are more than just beliefs. They are certainly more than mere opinions. Mine are CONVICTIONS. Not one of them was arrived at without a great amount of meditation and ponderance about the matter. I know where I stand on these issues. I know what I believe but much more than that, I know *why* I believe.
I'm not a man of ideologies. I loathe the notion that I of all people must have an ideology. I prefer to be known as a man of ideas. I realize that more often than not I've been called a conservative. That's the world's appellation for me. But I've never cared what the world thinks of me.
I know that where I stand on some things isn't the most popular. Just as where some people stand on their own issues, are not popular with me. To be honest, what some people believe in strike me as pretty horrifying.
But even so, where friendship and family are involved, I am not going to necessarily think any less of such a person.
It takes a LOT for me to be led to dissolve a relationship with someone on the basis of differences of belief. I'm not interested in that. To me, to come to that kind of an impasse is a great failure. It suggests that the friendship was less important than "must be right".
Am I right about what I believe? I am convicted that I am, just as I have to trust that others are convicted, too. My perspective about that is something that I had always known but it was while reading Atlas Shrugged that it gained clarity. That perspective being: I know what I believe and I have to trust that another knows what he or she believes. Let reality judge who is right. If I am right, and convince the other that I am, I count it as no victory for myself. If I am proven wrong, I count it as no loss.
I believe that some people in my life are wrong in what they believe. But I will NOT think any less of them for that. Not unless they come to adhere to something truly evil. And that hasn't happened much in my life, if at all.
I believe in God. I believe in God, Who among many other things is the author of reality. I would be a very poor adherent of that concept if I did not have faith that harsh though it may come, reality prevails in the end. I am an evangelist of reality. So who knows, I might be one who encourages others to consider some things that they might not have before. If I abandoned them, I will have abandoned the mission. And I can't do that.
I guess that all of this is a roundabout way of saying this: I can't diminish a friendship or put away family because of a difference of belief about something. That's not my nature.
And I would hope that no friend or family thinks any less of me for my own convictions.
Thank you.
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