I started riding my bike to work almost two years ago. I remember how different it felt than driving to work, how much of a different perspective it was. There were things I noticed that I had never noticed before.
I came to appreciate the ability to travel at fast speeds without moving a muscle, I came to appreciate just how steep some hills really are, and I came to realize how blessed I was to have ever had a car in the first place. Those are the kind of things that are easily over looked when you are used to driving all over the place.
If you had asked me 5 years ago, I would have laughed at the idea of preferring to ride to work instead of drive. I wouldn’t have cared about all the benefits because of all the lost time, but the new perspective biking gave me was contagious.
I think Christians need new perspectives. They are often very good at insulating themselves into specific areas of life where everyone thinks the same. The conservative Christians have their circle of pastors, authors, schools, etc, that they run with and the same could be said for more liberal Christians as well. And sadly those paths rarely cross.
People often tell me that I’m hard to pin down because I take so many different sides on various topics covered on this blog. And the honest truth is that sometimes I think we all (me included) need a new perspective. Not that the one we hold is incorrect, but that we begin understanding that the world is bigger than our possibly correct perspective.
I hope I never settle into my preferred perspective at the cost of shunning the others that surround me. While I might not always agree with them, they do have something to offer.