There is beauty in culture. I became good friends with a guy we will call Rob who is apart of the Y-people. Rob invited me into his home only a few days into our friendship. Before we got to his home, we spent some time at a shop owned by Rob’s uncle, who is a tailor for wedding attire worn by the Y-people. The shop unintentionally turned out to be a museum of the Y-people’s culture and I learned all about their traditions and what life is like where they are from. After that, we went to Rob’s apartment, where his family welcomed me in with such warm hospitality. They dressed me up like a sheikh (a leader of a village) in their traditional clothing, taught me how to dance, and turned me into a Y-person for a couple hours. Oh, and the Y-people’s food is some of the best food I’ve ever had in my entire life. Even with the short experience I had with the Y-people, I love them.
But this only breaks my heart more for Rob and his family. I’ve shared with him but, like a lot of other majority people here, he responded with saying that we believe the same thing, only that I believe the Son is God. It’s hard to share with the majority people here because they claim all of the same people that we do. In reality, the people they believe in are different characters, just with the same name. Rob was telling me a story about Solomon and how a bird told him to destroy a city of polytheists. This dual identity holds true for almost all the characters in our book, especially in regards to the Son and the Father. This is the difficulty of sharing with the majority. Even when we are both speaking the same language, our words don’t communicate the same ideas.