For the past couple of weeks, there have been a lot of random thoughts going through my head.
Most of them have revolved around one word — why?
In my own head, I have reminded myself of a little kid responding to everything he hears with a simple “but why?”
As my mind has glossed over a myriad of subjects, I came to the realization that a lot of people don’t bother to ask why anymore. Too often, our society wants to view everything as black and white, true or false, right or wrong.
But the reality is very little is actually as simple as black and white. In most cases, there are a lot of grey areas that come in to play. Even with one of the touchiest subjects in our society, especially in a town like Columbia.
While I’m admittedly a little hesitant to say what I’m about to, knowing the various emails I will receive as a result, I feel like I have to go there for some of you to understand that grey area exists in nearly everything and we don’t need everything to be black and white.
A couple weeks ago, I had a brief conversation with a friend about aliens. This friend is completely against the possibility of aliens existing, citing their faith, while I can’t just see how aliens don’t exist.
I mean, we are one planet belonging to one galaxy of millions. There are millions upon millions of planets in the universe, but human beings are the only intelligent life form?
With all of the various UFO sightings, depictions of non-human intelligent entities in ancient illustrations and text and unexplainable architectural advances that happened far before modern technology, it just seems to me that it would be naïve of anyone to think extraterrestrial beings do not exist.
Now when I told this friend this, they responded by asking if I believed in God. I said yes. They continued by asking if I had 100 percent faith. I said “No, I don’t believe anybody does.” This response was greeted with a quizzical look which led me to pose a simple question — “Have you ever had the tiniest shred of doubt, whether it be for merely a second or a day or a year or 20 years?”
My friend walked away after saying that I don’t have any faith.
This is what I am trying to get at. We are so caught up in everything having to be one or the other or not at all. But the reality is our minds don’t work that way.
Every last person that has faith has doubted in some way at some point. Whether it was in their darkest hour after losing a love one, trying to comprehend why God would take away somebody they held so dear, or when science posed an interesting counterargument. These doubts stem from our very being. Humans are a curious species.
Faith isn’t something that should be measured on a black and white scale because there will always be grey area because we are all human and have doubted at some point.
Now, I’m not saying these doubts are warranted. Many of these doubts stem from our lack of understanding of a limitless being, which God is. It is hard to fully comprehend because we are all, in some way, limited. There isn’t a bad God or a good God; He cannot be limited to such principles.
This concept trickles down into various subjects that we argue about throughout society. For example, there has been a lot of debate recently on the banning of transgender service members in the military.
My first thought was that it was probably a good idea. Our military needs to be precise and lethal, and it’s hard to be precise and lethal if the service men and women are distracted because of the presence of a transgender person who may make them feel uncomfortable.
However, I didn’t allow that thinking to be the end all, be all in my head. The other day, I came across a 12-minute excerpt of a documentary posted by The New York Times. It detailed the everyday lives of a transgender couple, both of whom were serving in the military.
The man, who was born a female, served alongside his fellow soldiers in combat in Iraq for two tours and not one member of his squad knew he was transgender. These soldiers were able to trust him with their lives and he didn’t disappoint, not once. Is the type of person we need to ban from our military?
Now I understand this is just one case. I’m sure there are countless others where service members being transgender became an issue. Just like I’m sure there are countless other cases detailed in the documentary.
But why does it have to be one or the other? All or none? Why?
Very little comes down to black or white. When did we become a society that stopped asking why?
Joshua Campbell is sports editor for The Columbian-Progress. He can be reached at (601) 736-2611 or by email at joshuacampbell@ columbianprogress.com
