‘A man convinced against his will…’

WAY back when I was a child in the 1950s, religious “debates” at our plaza were in vogue – usually between ministers of the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) and those of other Christian sects. I still remember the one pitting an INC minister against a layman of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI) or Aglipayan Church. Their heating conflict of arguments, the audience feared, could end in a fist fight.

To our relief, after an hour, they agreed on one thing: that their founders – Felix Manalo of the INC and Gregorio Aglipay of IFI – had done right in abandoning Roman Catholicism.

In a past column on religious diversity, I cited a home debate between my late father Juan and his INC friend Gerardo over Jesus Christ.  My dad, a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, disputed Gerardo’s argument that Jesus, though “the son of God,” was not God.

“That’s like saying that an animal born to a dog is not a dog,” Tatay debunked him.

Nobody gave in to the other, but their friendship remained intact for the rest of their lives.

I have since then followed their example in disagreeing with others without being disagreeable because, to quote the late American inspirational author Dale Carnegie, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”

The quotation leaps out from his classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936).

Yesterday, however, a Google search led me to the Bible (Romans 14:5) with a near-similar thought, “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.”

But Carnegie could have simply paraphrased a line from the 1684 satirical poem “Hudibras” by English poet Samuel Butler: “He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still”

Simply put, what’s right to one person is wrong to another.

But a right person may occasionally yield to the wrong one as a “peace-keeping” measure, as I once did on boarding an airplane where an obviously older woman had occupied my assigned seat.

I showed her my boarding pass, indicating she was in my aisle seat. But when she begged for “understanding” due to a kidney problem that necessitated frequent walks to the comfort, I gave in.

I was falling in line at the senior citizens’ lane in a pharmacy when a woman walked over and beat me to the cashier, announcing, “I feel bad. I have to take medicine now.”

In both the airplane and pharmacy scenes, I could have asserted my “priority right” at the risk of being judged “contrabida” by eyewitnesses.

Eventually I realized I had done right in allowing myself to be “wronged” for their sake and mine, too. A hypertensive like me must keep cool all the time; harboring anger could trigger heart harm.

We all have heard of Rolito G, who languished in jail for killing another man over a traffic altercation.

As in a game of basketball, the broader game of life is ideally played by obedience to rules and regulations which, unfortunately, are often bent to suit the prevailing norms.

Going back to theology, one sect interprets monotheism as praying to only one God; another group prays to “one God in three persons”; and a third group merely “venerates” Mama Mary and Church-canonized saints in answer to charges of idolatry.

A believer believes what he has been made to believe or what his senses tell. There are color-blind drivers who could not distinguish red from green and are so prone to beating the red light unknowingly.

To quote the Dalai Lama, “People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.”