Agree to Disagree

The Gnostic looks at agreement as an impossible achievement. At no point in the history of human beings (homo sapiens sapiens), which stretches some 200,000 thousand years, has there ever been total agreement on anything. Indeed, there are many people alive today who think the world is only a few thousand years old; not counting those who believe that the world is flat. The story of the Tower of Babel from the Bible is illustrative. The contention is that God wants us this way for some reason. To the Gnostic there is only one possible solution to this lack of agreement. That solution involves adding tolerance to our laws. This addition occurred when the Golden Rule was propagated by Jesus as one of two laws that we all have to follow. The first law is to accept that God is One and there is no other God. The second law is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. If this is not tolerance I fail to see what else it might be. In short, we need to stop demonizing each other because we disagree. As stated above, disagreement is the order of things and it is doubtful that full agreement will ever occur, at least during the conceivable future. A good start is to accept that all views, whether religious, political, economic, personal, or patriotic, need to be held in a tolerant manner so that others who disagree with us need not fear being punished for so doing. If we can achieve that perhaps someday we will all acknowledge the same truth. This is the Gnostic Way. When that truth is finally discovered it will go by the name of God.