We Ought to Be Willing to Give a Good Interpretation to the Statement of Another . . .

It is so easy to impute bad will to others who are actually attempting to be truthful and sincere—to deliberately not hear what they are saying because it disturbs us, or we disagree with them, or we simply need to be difficult.  St. Ignatius of Loyola wrote that we ought to be more willing to give a good interpretation to the statement of another than to condemn it as false.  And there is the quote attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas: “We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject.  For both have labored in the search for truth and both have helped us in the finding of it.” I remember the time that someone interviewed me about fair trade for a local publication (the interview was a bit of a fiasco for a number of reasons—beware of interviews!).  In the course of it, I made the statement that the difference between folk art and fine art was (to me) that folk art belonged more to a whole culture while fine art was the product of the individual.  It was an off-the-cuff remark and one that I thought was pretty neutral, but, for some reason, a local artist who read the interview became incensed by it and demanded the right to write a rebuttal.  I’m still not sure what it was in that statement which set the artist off, as the “rebuttal” (which was published in the next issue) never even addressed my contention.  Somehow, the artist saw my statement as an attack on fine artists.  The artist proceeded to air all sorts of grievances, which, I’m sure, were all legitimate, but I still don’t know how any of them had anything to do with what I said.  The whole affair seemed rather silly to me, and it was certainly unusual, as people generally tend to be more generous toward my offhand opinions than they (and I) actually deserve.  So often, instead of listening to others, we are content to box--or worse--with shadows of our own making.