Maybe it’s a middle child trait, but I’ve
never had trouble finding common ground between what I believe and what others
believe. Thus, I share with Mormons a
love for family, Catholics a love for tradition, Pagans a love for nature, and
atheists a love for reason. “All
religions must be tolerated,” Frederick the Great said in 1740, “and the
sole concern of the authorities should be to see that one does not molest
another, for here every man must be saved in his own way.” A tenant of the Mormon faith, that I admire
and endorse, states: “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God
according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same
privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may”. While I believe there is spiritual truth,
I’m not sure that I will ever get a full understand of that truth—or anyone
else for that matter. We may be like
blind men around an elephant, each person asserting that an elephant is a tree,
a rope, a tube, and a spear, as they each touch its leg, tail, trunk, or
tusk. Or, to use another analogy from
nature, we may be like frogs sitting on water lilies, each frog proclaiming
that the world is his water lily. The
reason we should be tolerant is that the difference between the most and the
least learned person is inexpressibly trivial in
relation to what we don’t know.
