Reflections: Stand up for principle or find safety in numbness?

Sydney
9 December 2001

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Reflections: Stand up for principle or find safety in numbness?

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Reflections: Stand up for principle or find safety in numbness?

My theory is that you grow up knowing the theory! Life, the afterlife, morality, what’s right and what’s wrong; the so-called big questions and the clear positions you formulate on each one.

Not to be confused with stridence or closed-mindedness, there’s a certain passion for right and wrong that goes with youth but gets lost later on, somewhere in the 20s. Trite analogies do the point justice I guess: the fire dies out, the relationship goes cold.

The reasons for this are, in my experience: one, your own life seems easier if conflict can be avoided – the clash of your personal value-system with the collective one; and, two, we have a fear of being singled out by our immediate peers about the really tough moral questions. We seem scared of having an opinion that goes against the current. So we choose to be that infamous ‘number’ none of us wants to grow up to be.

Safety in numbers, acceptance in numbers … blandness in numbers.

Throughout my university years and now in my professional and social life, I have heard countless snide remarks about the Church I love and its members, about what a poor job the clergy do, about the meaning lessness of sexuality and the disposability of unborn life.

These comments are usually made in passing, quite publicly and to a mixed audience – over a drink, at a party, in the office among people who don’t even know each other that well. You could say it has become conventional; people don’t even have to question whether it’s appropriate to criticise the substance of my faith. It’s a social ‘given’.

In the spirit of St Paul’s teaching to be all things to all people, I am a great believer in the calling of a Christian to find God right in the middle of this complex world, to be present in all social milieus and to enjoy it! You could say that everything around us is raw material for finding God.

I still hold to this approach to Christian life, but I have seen the inherent danger of becoming insipid and

losing one’s own identity. I have seen this dynamic played out many times: someone makes an assumption about, say, sexual ethics, on behalf of the group, and you keep your mouth shut rather than rock the boat. A derogatory comment is made about the Cath olic faith; again, a pleasant smile – and on with the show.

We trade our identity and differentness to be a number, with no opinion.

The rationale is something like “I won’t rock the boat because I want to be appealing to my peers. I want to be accepted”. The irony in this is that our very pursuit of social appeal is what makes us lose our appeal!

I am not talking about becoming reactionary or abrasive. I can think of little worse than the “holier than thou” bible-bashers who take on the world as if it were an enemy – as if they didn’t belong.

When I have explained my views – when the topic has come up naturally – my peers have found it refreshing to meet someone who doesn’t accept what is perceived to be the norm.

Some of my friends feel equally discontent at being carried along by the current of mindlessness. We are a subculture of rebels against the materialistic trend of emptiness we have been taught to reverence.

The boat we are so afraid of rocking is really not that solid.