Living a Contradiction

I have recently noticed that some people, myself included, often have contradictory aspects to their worldviews. That is to say that when you look at their worldview as a whole, you will notice what may not be obvious close up, that aspects of their worldview contradict other aspects of their worldview. I guess some people have not taken the time to reflect on their worldview and how they apply it to various aspects of their life.

If they are aware of the contradictions, perhaps they balance these contradictory aspects in some sort of creative tension. Or, perhaps, they balance them by compartmentalizing different aspects of their life by creating artificial boundaries of reality. They may have one way of viewing the world at work, another at home, and still another with friends.

They have to do something or else suffer psychological discomfort form the ensuing cognitive dissonance.

For example, you will find some Christians who speak of hating the sin and loving the sinner. In practice, they shun people they feel are living in sin. I fail to see the love. Other times, you will find Liberal Christians complaining that the Conservative Christians are being intolerant. Not realizing they are being intolerant of the Conservative Christians.

By no means, is this limited to the halls of the cathedral. Secular humanists want their morality to be relative and their science to be objective. Often, they cling to untenable scientism. For the true relativist, scientific theories are neither true nor false. They see scientific theories as useful – agreed upon – stories or, at best, a description that helps. For the true naturalist, morals are objective. They are defined by genetic code and there is nothing relative about them.

It seems to me that people don’t think about how what they believe in one area of their life flows into all the other areas of their life. Instead, they go through the smorgasbord buffet of competing ideas, selecting what looks appetizing to them at the time. They assume their life is like a divided Chinet plate and that they can separate different aspects of their lives. They use this artificial compartmentalization to avoid the obvious and painful realization that they are living a contradiction. The reality is the gravy is going to get on your vegetables. In that case, pick the gravy that works with everything on the plate.