Judge not, lest ye be judged
24/07/2008 12:23  - (SA)  

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Georgina Guedes

My friends are a particularly opinionated bunch of people. We're generally OK on our own, or in couples, but I suspect that there are some homes in Johannesburg (and London) that a few of us have been invited to from which invitations will be slower to come the second time.

In fact, some of my friends are so enthusiastic about a good debate that they've been known, when everyone in a room is in agreement, to harangue their supporters just for the sake of a good argument. It's considered ill form to point out that everyone's on the same page and the argument is pointless.

Having strong opinions is a quality I've always admired. Wishy-washy people who don't know much or think much about anything tend to annoy me. I think that it's important to know where you stand on all the big issues - the death penalty, animal testing, abortion, gay marriage - and to be able to present your argument with clarity.

And of course, being an opinionated person, I think it's important for people to have the same stance as me, otherwise I will argue with them. But at some point in my late twenties, I started to tire of all the ranting. I have started to feel that I would far rather my dinners were punctuated with interesting stories and witticisms than people getting purple in the face and thumping the table.

I have also started to realise that most of the clearly misguided people who hold different opinions from my own are not likely to change them, no matter how much I browbeat them. So now, the few times when my social circle ends up overlapping with some idiot who makes a racial, misogynist or **** slur at the dinner table, instead of taking him to task and embarrassing everyone else, I signal my disapproval with a thin-lipped closed mouth and talk to someone else instead.

I started to wonder if perhaps there was something wrong with me, if I was slipping into complacency. Women have the vote because people were willing to chain themselves to benches. South Africa has democracy because people cared enough to blow things up. Sometimes those who are most fervent are making a huge and positive change in the world, even if their methods are objectionable.

Going too far

In the movie The Last Supper, six friends murdered those people who they felt the world would be better without. When their final nemesis - a far-right conservative - came for dinner, and the poison was prepared, they were surprised to discover that his philosophy was to make as much noise as possible about certain issues, so that the extreme liberals would have a counterpoint, and society would continue along its middle-of-the-road path.

I admire his viewpoint, if not his politics, but there's another viewpoint that I have recently internalised, which more comfortably supports my world view: Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future says that those people that are most effective are those with strong opinions, lightly held.

His point is twofold - that we should have strong opinions is important, but we should also be open to other points of view. And when people disagree, we should be accepting of their rights to a different opinion, present our own clearly, but leave it at that, without disrupting the dinner table too much.

And so, without getting too het up, but almost certain of attracting fervent response, I state that Christianity is a religion of tolerance and one of its major tenets is "judge not, lest ye be judged", and people who feel that homosexuality is an abomination are welcome to refrain from homosexual acts, quietly and in the sanctity of their own homes, while the more tolerant among us roam the streets.