Oppose

O Lord, help me not to despise or oppose what I do not understand
William Penn

I think virtually all of us despise or oppose what we do not understand. History is full of examples of people who simply destroyed whatever they didn't understand, even whole cultures. Religions have probably been the worst offenders of all when it comes to despising or opposing what they don't understand. More people have probably been killed because they didn't have the "right" religious beleifs than for any other reason. Prejudice is largely the act of despising what you don't understand in a group of people different from you. We feel somehow threatened when we don't understand how the other person thinks, or what the other person is doing.

It is odd that people despise and oppose what they don't understand, instead of doing what would seem to be the logical thing, which is to simply try to understand it. Why is it so hard for us to accept that different people think in different ways, and about different subjects? And why don't we want to understand the way they think? We, who in so many ways are such extraordinarily curious, and very social, people.

How many times have you got mad at your spouse or child because you didn't understand their reasoning? Even within our homes, it would be such a better world if we really tried to understand why someone thought the way they did. After all, we just might discover that their way is better than ours. It is foolishly egotistical to think that we understand everything, and even worse to assume that our way is necessarily the best one. It makes much more sense to, instead of despising and opposing what we don't understand, just to learn from it and try to understand it. How else are we going to grow into the person we are meant to be?