Changing

After going home this weekend, I have become aware of how much I have changed. I am not surprised, and I don’t understand why anyone should be. Exactly what is it that keeps us the same? I think my dad would say that it is our beliefs. Well then, what keeps our beliefs the same?

How could I stay the same if I live in a different place with different people discussing different things? I can’t even go to the same church anymore, for crying out loud. I’m not saying that if I moved to India, I would inevitably become a Hindu. But if I moved to India and lived among Hindus, I would think that my Christianity would definitely change, not die, but change. I would see things in ways that I had never seen them before, I would think about things in ways that I had never thought about them before.

Is this inevitable change good? Is it desirable? I don’t know. I think it must be because ignorance is the only alternative to it. But is ignorance that bad? There is something desirable about living in the same place your entire life, that is the only way that you can really be the least ignorant of that one place, that one community, that one life. Maybe if we don’t live in one community our entire lives we can never really know any community completely, to our utmost ability. Maybe the ignorance of much is the only way to really know one thing.