Talk to Strangers

I'm sure you may have this well-known piece of advice handed down from generation to generation. "There are three things you should never talk about with strangers: sex, religion, and politics." I actually had never heard that until my first day of my new class "Religion and Politics." I find the advice funny and yet also, quite worriesome. It's funny because my blog is pretty much based entirely around religion and politics.. and it's mostly written for strangers. It worries me because these are the topics that people SHOULD be talking about.

In "When Religion Becomes Evil", Charles Kimball writes: "Although many of us have been taught it is not polite to discuss religion and politics in public, we must quickly unlearn that lesson. Our collective failure to challenge presuppositions, think anew, and openly debate central religious concerns affecting society is a recipe for disaster. We'd better take a few steps back and consider how we got where we are before simply pushing forward. As a wise friend once put it, 'When you are standing on the edge of a cliff, progress is not defined as one step forward.'" (Kimball 7).

If people engaged in interfaith dialogues, I believe that many of the clashes and conflicts between people of different faiths would lessen and disappear. If people embraced their differences and realized that it is okay to be different, but at the same time, learning about what makes people different and being tolerant of diversity, the world might finally get a taste of peace.