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PAGE 9 — The Georgia Bulletin, February 8, 1990
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
■ How do you react upon discovering that a friend holds a belief
very different from yours on the existence of God, abortion, fair
business practices or the value of serving the poor?
In a pluralistic society, people who disagree on basic beliefs
often are friends and co-workers. It is part of life in the
marketplace.
—Some people withdraw, refusing to discuss the matter fur
ther upon discovering a basic area of disagreement with a friend.
—Some people become confrontational or angry.
—Some people see the topic of disagreement as an opportunity
for dialogue — a chance to listen carefully to another and to share
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their own belief clearly.
—Some people become defensive.
In pluralistic settings, you sometimes can feel like an outsider
because of your beliefs. At times you might feel confused by
society’s swirl of value systems.
The fact is, the pluralism of the marketplace is demanding. It
pushes people to clarify their own beliefs and to continue growing.
People react in various ways to the challenges posed by the
differing value systems they encounter. They will likely agree,
however, that the modern marketplace has a way of making it hard
to remain passive about one’s own faith.
__ David Gibson, Editor, Faith Alive!
CNS photo by Cleo Photography
When lifestyles clash
By Father Herbert Weber
Catholic News Service
mm
A member of the parish invited me to
a neighborhood brunch. It sounded like
a warm idea on a cold morning so I went.
Several couples arrived at the
woman’s house just as I did. We intro
duced ourselves and later sat in the
living room balancing plates on our
knees as we tried to make small talk.
A couple who originally hailed from
Brooklyn started to talk about their
first experiences after moving to our
small Midwestern university town. Not
only were they going from an urban to
a rural environment, they also were
coming from a predominantly Jewish
environment to one almost totally
Christian.
Another couple recalled their move
from the West Coast. They identified
with the couple from Brooklyn in some
experiences, but had their own stories
to tell too. For this couple, Protestant
ism had been the prevailing experience;
the high percentage of Catholics in the
industrial Midwest had surprised them.
As I left the gathering, I realized that
I, too, had come from a different and
more enclosed environment, growing up
in a town where virtually everyone was
Catholic and of German descent. I was
reminded that coming face to face with
society’s cultural and religious diversity
can be a complicated task.
Discovering that not everyone shares
your values or grew up in like circum
stances can be enriching and exciting,
but challenging and perplexing too.
One of our college students had a
roommate from an entirely different
ethnic background than her own. The
Struggling with diversity
By Father John Castelot
Catholic News Service
The first Christians were not hermits.
Many were surprisingly mobile. Those
who stayed in one locale lived in a
culturally diverse population. Palestine
was far from being uniformly Jewish.
Throughout its history Palestine had
been subjected to all sorts of influences:
Assyro-Babylonian, Persian, Greek. In
the time of Jesus and right up to the
destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., it
was an occupied country with a strong
Roman flavor.
Peter’s first recorded convert was the
centurion Cornelius, together with his
household. Though Peter resisted the
contact at first, he was brought to
realize that Christianity was not wedd
ed to one culture. Christians had to rub
shoulders with all sorts of people.
Paul’s friends and co-workers, Aquila
and Priscilla, were a cosmopolitan
couple. Tent-makers like Paul, they
apparently were very successful at their
trade. Originally from Pontus on the
Black Sea, they were in Rome when the
Edict of Claudius expelled Jews from
the city. In Corinth they met Paul and
later turned up in Ephesus. Their house
became a “house church.”
Their travels brought Aquila and
Priscilla into contact with many
cultures, universal and local. Corinth
was a seething melting pot, a Roman
colony with a solid Greek background.
Ephesus, as the political and religious
capital of the Roman province of Asia,
was a cultural hodgepodge. Christians
could not stand aloof. They influenced
and were influenced.
Lydia, one of Paul’s first converts at
Philippi, was a “dealer in purple cloth,
from Thyatira,” now Turkey. She seems
to have been an energetic and enter
prising foreign representative of a high-
class textile firm, with her own house in
Philippi.
Lydia was a sophisticated business
woman with contacts in all levels of
society. The fact that she dealt in purple
cloth indicates that her customers were
of the upper class. This particular
material was expensive, given the
difficulty of extracting purple dye from
the inside of a seashell and then
laboriously processing it. (The rich man
in Jesus’ parable of Dives and Lazarus
“dressed in purple garments and fine
linen.”)
FURTHER NOURISHMENT
■ At the time of Jesus over 150 cities
of the Roman world had synagogues,
writes Frederick J. Cwiekowski in The
Beginnings of the Church. Sometimes
synagogue services attracted people who
were not Jews but who considered
Judaism an honorable religious tradition.
Some of these people later were among
the earliest Christian converts, the author
adds, and the mingling of different
cultures and traditions continued into
Christian times. (Paulist Press, 997
Macarthur Blvd., Mahwah, N.J. 07430.
1988. Paperback, $9.95.)
Her homebase of Thyatira was an
internationally famous textile center, a
commercial hub with worldwide con
tacts. One of the seven letters in the
New Testament book of Revelation was
addressed to the Christian community
there.
Christians could not live in such a
materialistic atmosphere without running
the risk of compromising their own val
ues. While living in that atmosphere, they
had to preserve their integrity and iden
tity. This troubled Revelation’s author.
The city of Laodicea also received one
of Revelation’s letters. The city was a
banking center, dispenser of an eye-
salve treasured throughout the world
and a textile industry center.
Involvement in all those enterprises
had led to an alarming cooling of Chris
tian fervor. Thus we read this
devastating accusation in Revelation:
“I know your works; I know that you
are neither cold nor hot. So, because you
are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will
spit you out of my mouth. For you say,
‘I am rich and affluent and have no need
of anything,’ and yet do not realize that
you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind
and naked” (3:15-17).
Remaining truly Christian while
actively engaged in all the pursuits of
a culturally diverse society obviously
was not easy. But Christians never were
urged to run away.
They faced the daily challenge of
being involved in the world without
abandoning their Christian principles.
(Father Castelot is a Scripture scholar,
author and lecturer.)
student’s parents had protested to the
university about her placement with a
roommate so different from herself.
The two young women, however, were
eager to talk. Soon they were relating
similar family concerns and hopes. Even
in their diversity, they found they had
much in common.
Sometimes, however, other people’s
values and ideals do not blend with
one’s own. At such times one’s own
values have to be examined as well as
the values of the other person. Choices
have to be made.
Another young woman I’ll call Sue
encountered a roommate who epito
mized all that parents fear can happen
at a big university. The roommate con
sumed lots of alcohol, missed many
classes and frequently slept over with
various boyfriends.
Sue recounted that in her shock it was
relatively easy to reject the other
woman’s shallow value system. The
decision was clear to Sue.
But when a friend of Sue’s from down
the hall started “cutting comers” in her
classwork and when it became clear that
the accepted approach of many students
was to cheat on exams, Sue had to face
an even tougher, although subtler, deci
sion: Should she reject her own prin
ciples in light of the new attitudes being
presented to her?
Fortunately the process of resolving
such issues can be enriching for anyone
trying to clarify his or her own values.
Naturally, not all other points of view
should be seen as bad or as a watering
down of one’s own beliefs.
When Sean first came to the liturgy
at our church, he felt uncomfortable
because there were many differences
from his home parish: The music was
different and the layout of the church
was non-traditional.
The differences were hard for Sean to
accept, but after talking about the
meaning of liturgy and what was
intended, he found his whole attitude
changing and his faith life growing.
Pluralism sometimes makes life hard
to understand. But it also can open up
exciting new avenues for living.
(Father Weber is pastor of St. Thomas
More University Parish, Bowling Green,
Ohio.)
Faith Alive! is published by Catholic News Service, 3211 Fourth St. N.E., Washington, D.C. 20017-1100. All contents copyright © 1990 by Catholic News Service.