Project Vision 21

Francisco Miraval

Many years ago, when my daughter was still in the early grades of elementary school, one day she had a test a school and it seems she had not studied enough for that test because she soon discovered she did not have the answer to one of the questions.

My daughter decided then to use a simple and brilliant strategy. “Jesus,” she wrote. The teacher then explained that was not the correct answer because it didn’t show knowledge of the topic. “Of course that’s the answer!” my daughter said. “The pastor told us last Sunday that Jesus is the answer to everything!”

We can forgive and understand a little girl for using such a cute and funny trick to provide an answer to a question she never met before, and to use in her answer what she assumed was an obvious and undeniable truth. At least she did try to provide an answer.

We can also forgive her for, at that early age, confusing the “answer to everything” the pastor mentioned during his sermon at the church with the answers to a school test, believing the test was a good opportunity to apply in a literal way what the pastor said.

What it will be difficult to forgive is for my daughter or anybody else to keep using that pre-established and decontextualized answer again and again, even after the “mistake” has been explained, to answer not only academic tests by any other circumstances in life.

In fact, one of the elements of the process of growing up, on the basis of gaining experience in life and progressing in education, is for people to provide their own answers, sometimes timidly, sometimes boldly, thus expressing their own ideas and thoughts.

If, as adults, people still offer the same simple answer to every question they face and in addition they argue about the absolute validity of their answer, then not only no dialogue is possible, but it seems one has the right to question if that person truly understand what he/she is saying or if he/she understands what one is asking.

We will hardly meet any adult using just a word to reply to a question whose answer they ignore, but we will meet many adults still invoking some kind of authority and trying to settle the issue in that way. I frequently hear answers such as “It has been proven by science,” “It is written in (sacred text book of your preference),” “They said it on TV,” and even “We shouldn’t talk about those things.”

I think it is unacceptable that, in the context of the complexity of modern life when we are challenged by situations humanity never experienced before, we are still offering “childish” answers, and blissfully ignoring that those answers are as empty and out of place as answering a math test with a religion belief.

In this world constantly changing and evolving, those simple answers from our childhood may bring some consolation, but that doesn’t mean they are true.