Prithi Hardkaur Source: prithihardkaur.wordpress.com in roughly two and a half months I’ll be moving to a different area of the country and sharing my living space with five other people I’ve never met. Meeting new people always means lots of questions, and I predict that somewhere in-between “What’s your name?” and “Do you have a favorite animal?” will be the inevitable shifty look at my dastaar and “So…ummm…are you religious?”
The thing about questions is that they always pave the way for more questions. Don’t get me wrong, for the most part I don’t mind this at all and being a spokesperson of sorts has never really daunted me in the past. I even relish the opportunity to share my experiences and viewpoints. So what’s the problem?
The problem is that when most people ask you questions, it’s not an interested request for information, they want an argument.
I’m sure you recognize this scenario: a friend introduces you to someone and before long the topic of religion arises. You get asked: “What do Sikhs believe, then?” and begin explaining until interrupted with “But if Sikhism doesn’t agree with ritual, why do you bow to a book?” or “But you said the Guru Granth Sahib was scripture and now you’re telling me it’s a ‘living’ Guru? How can a book breathe!” And so on and so on. Regardless of what religion you happen to be or to which spiritual practice you subscribe, the argument always heads towards an inexorable downward spiral of debating God’s existence, before falling headfirst into overzealous assertions of “I’m right! You’re wrong!”
Fortunately I’ve learnt ways to minimize these situations over the past few years, the first being to recognize that a question isn’t always a question. It might seem as if someone wants to find out what your beliefs are, but most of the time it’s an invitation for the other person to discuss their own opinions about your beliefs, or even worse, what they think are your beliefs, based on a generalization. This is exactly why the innocently framed question above (“what do Sikhs believe?”) turns into an attack on the very things you happen to mention. It’s not always easy to recognize the motivation behind a question without knowing the person asking it, but I’ve noticed that the broader the question, the more likely it is to lead you into difficulty. Asking someone “what do Sikhs/Muslims/Jews believe?” is about as broad as it gets. It’s like asking Stephen Hawking “what do you know about black holes?”- there’s so much to say on the subject that you end up oversimplifying to get your message across- which can easily be re-stated by the other person to make your explanations sound plain stupid.
The second way to avoid argument ambushes is to notice when a question is disguised as a statement. They’ll say something like “Sikhs think it’s bad to cut their hair don’t they?” Of course, they don’t really want to know whether they remembered correctly, what they want is to instantly get you talking about a controversial topic- something hard to resist because they provocatively used the word 'bad' to make the whole idea sound absurd.
The third approach is to take a neutral stance and use logic to navigate your way through the thoughts of the other person rather than your emotions. Instead of becoming defensive, consider the situation: are they logically undermining your answers or just expressing their opinion? Are they attacking your arguments or are they making a more personal attack on you? Are they generalizing everyone in a religious group to make them appear a particular way?
And finally, the last piece of advice is to accept from the outset that no one is going to be right in this debate because there is nothing to win. Not even their approval for your hip, revised versions of the conventional preachy answers!
OneGod (58K)
Editor's Note:
The above poem is from: Plus One : God Is In This Place Lyrics
Songwriters: Lewis, Stephanie; Sillas, Phillip H.;
http://www.metrolyrics.com/god-is-in-this-place-lyrics-plus-one.html#ixzz0tXxrDDdm

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