私はクリスチャンで神さまの存在を信じている。同じキリスト教を信じている者同士の集まり、つまり教会にいるととても気が楽だし、安らぎを感じる。教会員は年齢や性別、育ち方もさまざまで、キリスト教に対する考え方もそれぞれ微妙に異なるが、同じ目標を持った仲間同士という感じがして、私はとても好きな人たちだ。
しかし日本におけるクリスチャンの割合は人口の0.9％以下と言われている。即ちクリスチャンは極少数派で、圧倒的にキリスト教に関係がない人が多いということ。それが現実であり、私たちはクリスチャンの仲間の中だけでは生きてゆけない。外の世界の異質な他者との交流が不可欠と言えるだろう。
交流してゆく過程で、私たちにとっては神が存在することは当たり前だが、全くそうは思っていない人が私たちの100倍もいることを覚えておかないといけない。自分にとっての常識が、他の人たちにとっても通じるとは限らない。そこの部分が分からない人が意外と多いのだ。むしろ何故自分の考えが分からないのだろうと悩む人の方が多いのかもしれない。
クリスチャンの話を離れて考えても、世の中には自分の「物差し」を基準にしてしか物事を測ることができない人がいる。自分の物差しを他人に当てはめて、その人の言動や行動を理解しようとするから分からなくなるのではないか。物差しは種類も大きさも十人十色で、厳密に言えば人の数だけ物差しの種類があると言っても良い。自分の物差しこそが世の中にある唯一の物差しであるとしか捉えられず、つまり自分の基準・考え方を絶対化して交流しようとしても、他者とは交わらないと思う。まず相手の物差しを理解しようと試みた上で、自分の物差しでも測ってみたり、他の誰かものを借りてきて当ててみたりして、物事をさまざまな角度から相対的に検討してみないことには、真実に近づくことは難しいと思う。
通院するほどではないにしても、発達障害の一種で他人とコミュニケーションが上手く取れない人たちがいる。自分の物差しでしか人や物事を測ることができず、しかもそれがその人にとっては自然なことであり、周りとの関係を自分が乱していることに全く気がついていない。非常に攻撃的で、不快に思ったことをところ構わず怒鳴り散らしてしまう。或いは反対に極端に消極的で、自分の殻にこもって出て来られなくなる人たちもいる。攻撃的な時と消極的な面が交互に現れる場合もある。精神科の医師にキチンと診断してもらえば病名がつくのかもしれない。
少々極端な例を挙げてみたが、こういった発達障害やうつ病のような要素は個人差がありながら、誰の心の中にも存在していると思う。それが表出するかしないかは、僅かな差でしかないのではないか。私の中にも充分にある。ある意味では誰もが発達障害者であり、いつか自分がそうなってしまう可能性は消えない。こういった“特徴がある人”がコミュニティー内の人間関係を破壊したり、活動を阻害したりしてしまったら、居場所を失ってしまうのは仕方がないことなのかもしれないが、願わくはどんな人間も共生できる社会でありたいと思う。
もしかしたらクリスチャンである私たちマイノリティーは、健やかな社会活動を妨げる異端分子として、マジョリティーから不快に思われているのかもしれない。私たちクリスチャンの使命の一つとして、キリストの福音を広く宣べ伝えるという任務が課せられている。仲間同士でいるときに感じる平安に甘んじることなく、外界との交流に励み、共に主を讃える仲間を増やしてゆきたい。
自分を絶対化してしまっては、ダメだよね
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I am a Christian and I believe in God. I feel very comfortable and at peace when I am at church, a gathering of people who believe in the same Christian faith. The members of the church are of various ages, genders and backgrounds, and their ideas about Christianity also differ slightly, but I feel that we are all friends with the same goal, and I really like them.
However, it is said that the percentage of Christians in Japan is less than 0.9% of the population. In other words, Christians are a very small minority, and there are many people who have no connection to Christianity. This is the reality, and we cannot live only among our Christian friends. It can be said that interaction with different people from the outside world is essential.
In the process of interacting with others, it is natural for us to believe in God, but we must remember that there are 100 times more people who do not believe in God. What is common sense for you may not necessarily be common sense for others. There are many people who do not understand this. In fact, there may be more people who wonder why others do not understand their own way of thinking.
Even if we leave the Christian perspective aside, there are people in the world who can only measure things using their own “ruler”. I think that this is because they try to understand the words and actions of others by applying their own ruler to them, and this makes them unable to understand them. There are many different types and sizes of ruler, and if we are to be precise, we could say that there are as many different types of ruler as there are people. If you only see your own measuring stick as the only one in the world, and try to interact with others by absolutizing your own standards and way of thinking, I think you will not be able to communicate with others. I think it is difficult to get close to the truth unless you first try to understand the other person’s measuring stick, and then try to measure things with your own measuring stick, or try to measure things by borrowing someone else’s measuring stick and trying to apply it, and then consider things from various angles in a relative way.
There are people who have a type of developmental disorder that makes it difficult for them to communicate with others, even if it’s not to the extent that they need to go to hospital. They can only measure people and things using their own yardstick, and moreover, this is natural for them, and they are completely unaware that they are disrupting their relationships with those around them. Some people are extremely aggressive, and they shout out their displeasure wherever they are. Alternatively, there are also people who are extremely passive, and they withdraw into themselves and become unable to come out. In some cases, aggressive and passive sides may appear alternately. If you see a psychiatrist, you may be diagnosed with a mental illness.
I have given some extreme examples, but I think that these kinds of developmental disorders and depression exist in everyone’s mind, although there are individual differences. Whether or not they are expressed is only a small difference. I have enough of them in me. In a sense, we are all developmentally disabled, and the possibility that we will become so one day never goes away. If people with these kinds of “characteristics” destroy relationships within the community or hinder activities, it may be inevitable that they lose their place, but I hope that we can live in a society where all people can live together.
Perhaps we Christians, as a minority, are seen as heretics by the majority, and are unwelcome because we hinder healthy social activities. One of our missions as Christians is to spread the gospel of Christ as widely as possible. We want to increase the number of people who praise the Lord together with us, by not being content with the peace we feel when we are with our fellow believers, but by striving to interact with the outside world.
We can’t become self-righteous, can we?