PLAIN TRUTH: Don’t force your beliefs on others

The beautiful thing about living in this age of enlightenment is that everyone has an opinion on something, biased or not. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • It doesn’t matter if your belief is also held as true by the majority. Case in point, a church was set up right in front of the house where my friend Kinyua lives.
  • It’s small, with only a handful of members, but they have a powerful sound system.
  • For him and other neighbours, quiet Friday nights and sleeping in on Sunday mornings are now luxuries of the past.

Some friends and I threw a hen party last weekend for a close friend who is getting married. Everything was going as planned until Saturday morning, when our chosen baker announced that she would not write the words we had sent her on the cake.

They were too explicit and she is saved; writing those words on our cake would be going against her beliefs, she said. Never mind that were not asking her to put the cake on her display. We asked her to show us how to do it so we could write for ourselves but she wouldn’t.

At one point, she spoke about artistic freedom. We ended up going with a plain cake and a bitter taste in our mouths.

I will not get into the issue of artistic freedom because we were buying a cake, not a piece of art.

First, this woman should have cautioned us before we paid the deposit that she could only fulfil ‘Christian’ orders. I mean, we have warning labels on bottles or alcohol and packs of cigarettes telling you what exactly you are getting.

You could say that it is her business and that she can have whatever rules she wants: I say that by refusing us, she was pushing her moral code and beliefs on us.

IT’S OKAY TO DIFFER

The beautiful thing about living in this age of enlightenment is that everyone has an opinion on something, biased or not. Debates are plenty and they are often interesting. The problem comes when we become closed minded – when we begin thinking that is only one way, that our way is the only true one.

It doesn’t matter if your belief is also held as true by the majority. Case in point, a church was set up right in front of the house where my friend Kinyua lives. It’s small, with only a handful of members, but they have a powerful sound system.

For him and other neighbours, quiet Friday nights and sleeping in on Sunday mornings are now luxuries of the past. The owners of the apartment buildings around have been sluggish in taking action. “It’s a church. It’s not a bad thing. It could have been a bar,” they say.

This argument does not hold water. True, being spiritual and believing in something is a good thing. It is another thing altogether when this is forced on you, when you have to listen to the preacher from your bedroom, and when your choice to be a part of it or not is no longer existent.

It’s okay to have opposing opinions or beliefs. Our experiences shape our beliefs and we have all had different ones.

Educate people if you feel compelled to. Knock on their doors and ask them if they want to listen to your views. Don’t, however, take away their choice to agree or disagree with you by putting up a church in their front yard or refusing to decorate their cake.

Allow other people’s beliefs to exist as their truth.