Disagree? Learn from it!

Having a disagreement is something that everyone experiences at one time or another, as humans we can't agree with everything that everyone else says all of the time (that would life incredibly boring.) However, what are we meant to do when we disagree with something? Are we meant to get angry and fight for what we believe is correct? Perhaps we should calmly show the other person why they are wrong? Maybe we are meant to completely ignore that person and their opinion, that was the route I went down a while ago when I encountered something I disagreed with.

So earlier this year I bought a few Christian books, (I won't mention the names of them or the authors) problem was I only agreed with maybe fifteen per cent of what was written in them. I am well aware as someone new to the faith I am not the best person to ask about interpreting the Bible. Even so, after doing some research of my own I disagreed with the way that the authors had interpreted many parts of it. Upon realising that I didn't agree with most of the book I was frustrated, I had spent a fair amount of money on something that was now of little use to me. In an attempt to get at least something out of the books I read and focused mainly on the parts I agreed with skipping over the parts that I didn't, while I did learn a few things from it I still felt as though I was missing out on a lot. Annoyed at the money I had wasted I put the books away and forgot about them; until one morning when I was sitting in the park I overheard a dad talking with his kid; it was clear they were arguing over something. The longer their conversation went on the angrier the kid got but the dad remained calm eventually, he said

"you learn more from failure than you do from success, you can learn more from disagreement than agreement if you take the time to listen. It is up to you to choose whether you want to take the time to learn from opinions that aren't the same as your own."

That comment stuck with me all day, the longer I thought about it the more I realised it to be true. If you hide within a bubble of your own opinions you may not realise that you are actually in the wrong; that there's a better way to do something or even why you hold those opinions in the first place. I decided to go back to the books that I had left on the shelf and see if there was anything more I could learn from them. I read and studied every single chapter for any knowledge it could give me and boy did I learn a lot. I learnt because instead of ignoring, getting angry or trying to prove my point I listened (or read) in full as to what their opinions and interpretations were; I listened and learnt from them. At the end of each chapter I would go away and study the scripture myself then I would write down what parts I agreed with the author on, what parts I disagreed with and why (using scripture references and a sentence of my own independent opinion.) In doing that I learnt way more about the topic than I had during my first read through, figured out what I believed on the topic and how that fits into my faith journey.

After using this method to study through those books do I still disagree with eighty-five per cent of what the authors wrote? Yes, but that's okay. I don't have to agree with everyone on everything and they don't have to agree with me either. Do I still feel the books were a waste of money? Absolutely not; I have learnt so much more through the parts I didn't agree with than the parts that I did and that is amazing.

I would definitely recommend stepping out of your own opinion bubble and going back to something or someone you disagreed with to learn more about it, I have been doing that for a few months now and it had really changed the way I study. What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with the quote from the dad above? I would love to hear your opinions.