The other day a friend talked to me about her believes. She compared Jesus to Mohammed and to L. Ron Hubbard and said they all had been geniuses in their own ways, and all have had beautiful thoughts – it was the church institutions that “messed it up”, by creating sick hierarchies for power struggles and who established authoritarian, oppressive systems around them.
What if Jesus never wanted the crusades and Mohammed never wanted 9/11 to happen? What if Hubbard didn’t want Scientology to threaten and bully their church members? I came away from this conversation wondering what this meant for any expression of wisdom. Is it true that whoever has a great idea will find it corrupted at some point by misguided followers? Does this mean we shouldn’t distribute our alleged “pearls of wisdom” as in due time, our words will be corrupted, twisted and turned onto their heads?
What it means to me is to accept that we must surrender control. We must surrender control over the ways we are perceived by others. We have no control over how our truths are received and interpreted. I will continue to say what I believe to be true, trusting that people will give me the benefit of the doubt that I speak and write with the best intentions. In the end what counts is not the actual effect your actions or words might have with various individuals (this is up to them). What matters is the purity of heart and good intent we have in the moment we do or say things.