Sometimes You've Got to be Stubborn

There are not a lot of words that are positive sounding synonyms for "uncompromising." Some that come to mind include stubborn, rigid, inflexible, hardheaded, dogmatic, and strong-willed. Strong-willed must be the most positive out of the bunch; it's the one my mother uses to put rose-colored glasses on the behavior of my youngest child.

My point with this little lesson in lexicon is that this quality is not one that we embrace in our culture. It is far better to meet in the middle, or be open-minded, or find common ground. In general I tend to agree. Gridlock from hard-liners in Washington has paralyzed the country, and it generally isn't a great quality in a business environment either. Marriages and other relationships are often made or broken based on the ability to be malleable. A good goal is a balanced lifestyle. 

However, it seems that the one topic in our culture that it is most unforgivable to take an uncompromising, stubborn, close-minded approach is in religion. To do so it to commit the sin of all sins in our culture: intolerance. And it is here where I think it is essential to hold firm and find it deadly to compromise.

This idea shows up in the novel Satanic Verses, a book that I wrote about earlier this month. It has much to say on this topic that really resonated with me, despite the fact that the book's focus is on Islam. For instance:

• At one point in the text, for the sake of peace the leader of a nation attempts to make a deal with a rebellious group that is pushing an entirely different religious agenda. One character responds with these words: ‘You miss the point,’ she says softly, coming closer to him, bringing her face very close to his. ‘If you are for Allah, I am for Al-Lat. And she doesn’t believe your God when he recognizes her. Her opposition to him is implacable, irrevocable, engulfing. The war between us cannot end in truce.’
• "For truth is extreme, it is so and not thus, it is him and not her, a partisan matter, not a spectator sport. It is, in brief, heated."
• Any new idea . . is asked two questions. This first is asked when it’s weak: WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway withe breeze? - The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world.

Whether you're on the same page as me theologically or not, if we're talking about something as precious and as important as faith, compromise must not be made. Learning should. Questioning should. Improvement in understanding should. But compromise? Never. For as the quote above says, truth is extreme. And if you don't think that you have the truth, why do you have it?

A friend of mine who isn't on the same page theologically but does enjoy good conversation, debate, and questioning recently sent me a CNN article about a hot-button religious issue. I'm leaving the article and the topic out of this post - I don't want there to be confusion about my topic and purpose here. My major problem with the article, though, is that there were two sides - and both claimed Biblical support. However, one side used actual biblical text; the other argued that biblical understanding must be adjusted as culture changes.

Christians - there can be no compromise with the shifting sands of culture. And for worshipers of culture, there can be no compromise with Christianity. Why make the attempt? Instead, stand strong, inflexible, and stubborn, growing but never offering the truth you hold dear as part of the bargain for being known as tolerant.