A Priest, a Minister, and a Cleric walk into a Bar...
This evening, while sitting in my kitchen with one friend who is Catholic and another, Hossein, who is Muslim, the conversation turned to people who use foul language. The catalyst was loud foul language in public, but it turned towards the general reasons for favoring that sector of the lexicon. Each of the others gave a few thoughts, and then they turned to me to ask what I thought.
This was not a new line of thought for me, so I started laying out my reasoning. In summary it is based on a belief that people need love, that love can't be given without attention, and that saying, doing, and wearing shocking things generally draws attention. I started out talking about various aspects of this, and then drew back to the theological basis for this reasoning. The exchange happened something like the following.
"I figure that God is the embodiment of Love, right? And as part of our design we humans need love. We need to love God and be loved by Him. People of faith have some sort of relationship with God, so their need for that love is being met, in some small respect at least. This is why, I suppose, they generally behave "better" than others, at least in the social-etiquette sense. If, on the other hand, the person does not have that relationship with God, they need to meet that need for love somewhere else."
I cannot recall if it was just there where I stop the narrative or somewhere earlier, but from the beginning up to some certain point, Hossein sat across the table from me, listening intently. There came a moment when he seemed to be thinking particularly hard, and then seemed enlightened. A big smile broke across his face, and he reached across the table and gave me a very enthusiastic high five!
As Lewis says, we are all created in the image of God and should not be surprised when people and creeds of any variety reflect their creator.
But I still don't understand how it works.