Analysis of the Article Intellectual Humility and Forgiveness of Religious Conflict

The article, “Intellectual Humility and Forgiveness of Religious Conflict.’, discusses a study regarding religious conflict. One of the authors begins by giving a detailed synopsis of what their experience was a undergraduate in religious studies. They often found themselves in conversations with people of other religions that resulted in conflict.

In the United States diverse religion, ethnicity, and cultures are present and have been for many years. The point of conflict being unavoidable in religion was made. The author felt that they missed windows to display the gospel of Christ during these discussions. People get so caught in their beliefs that they forget that there are imperfections in what they believe in also. They often see their religion as the ‘perfect’ or the one that everyone should follow. Every religion has some sort of weakness whether people see it or not, including Christianity.

There are many factors that can cause some questions or raise some eyebrows about religion. They then discovered that they lacked intellectual humility, something that many people struggle with in many aspects of their lives. Intellectual humility is what would aid in conflict in any subject. Intellectual humility can be defined as a trait that allows someone to understand and respect everyone’s thought process or opinions. This is something very hard to achieve because there is a great amount of passion and faith that makes it hard to acknowledge any other religion or thought. In the United States, that is something that many people have not come to agree with because of their ignorance.

According to the authors, they did not respect the morals and thought process of others because they felt that their beliefs were morally correct. The researchers of this study tried to use other studies of humility and forgiveness to aid them in this study but were unsuccessful in finding enough research regarding religious conflict and forgiveness. This article states that this is the most critical issue of Christian living and this study adds the necessary research to help bring a solution to the problem. In the study they surveyed 200 undergraduate students and they were asked to name a time where they felt insulted or upset in a relationship over a religious issue. The survey was given online and was measure in five standards, forgiveness, general humility, religious commitment, intellectual humility of the victim, perceived intellectual humility if the offender.

The researchers came up with two hypotheses, victims would view the offender’s intellectual humility and their own in a way that would show forgiveness. The second hypothesis was the commitment of religion would abate forgiveness and the victim’s intellectual humility. They believed that it would be so much that forgiveness and intellectual humility would have a stringer relationship between people who are not so religious. Only the first hypothesis was supported by the results from the survey. I agree with the point of the article. I do believe that people lack intellectually humility, especially as Christians. Even myself I can use as an example I try to have intellectual humility, but it is hard especially with how strong my faith is. It is difficult to get so caught up in my own beliefs that I disregard other religions. There are often times where I find myself even calling their beliefs wrong. That is something that has to be acknowledged before it can be changed. Some people do not understand the importance of intellectual humility, and some do not even know that they do lack it. To further prove the analysis, I would continue to test and experiment with different types of variables to see if I can find any more information on religious conflict. I believe that the results can vary depending on location, age, culture, and even ethnicity.

Two people that both believe in Christianity but live in different states can have different results. I believe that intellectual humility is something that should be taught at a young age. It is so much easier to learn something as a child rather than being an adult. People especially as Christians, are supposed to love and respect everyone but when it comes to defending our religion, we lose sight of some our morals and principles that make our religion significant. If I was to do this study, I would not just use college students, I would use people of all demographics to get the best results possible. It is kind of hard to just only use only one group of people. The advantage of using older adults is that they have experienced life longer, so they may have different answers that can contribute a great deal to the research. Using people in college may come at a disadvantage because they may not have lived long enough to have religious conflicts considering they are between the ages of eighteen and twenty. Religious conflict is something that has been going on for centuries and will continue because of people’s ignorance.

This topic is very important to Christian belief and psychology because it is a continuous cycle that does not seem that it will break anytime soon. It is something that I still struggle with when I come into contact with people that have opposite religious beliefs. My own father is an atheist and we have debated all the time that do not always end well because I usually end up attacking what he believes instead of trying to understand it. That is the difference, instead of attacking other people’s beliefs, we should be looking to try to understand and respect it at the very least.

As humans, it is odd for us to think that someone believes different than us because by nature, we always think that we are right about everything. We should instead use our passions and faith to help guide others to join us and Christ to the kingdom which is ultimately Heaven. Not everyone is going to have the same values or beliefs but as a Christian I should use the grace of god to respectively give my opinions.