I am not at all a Marxist. Far from it, actually.

But when I met a professor of Marxism who teaches at a local university in Jiangsu province, China, while riding the bullet train the other day, I got curious. I didn’t agree with much of what he was saying, but I kept asking questions, and he was eager to explain to a foreigner the details of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and Xi Jinping Thought. Before we knew it, we had been talking for an hour when the professor had to get off at his stop. While he was leaving, we learned that we both live in Nanjing, and he offered to show me around the historic parts of the city and teach me more about Chinese culture when I have the time.

This experience is, in my experience, a common occurrence for myself and my fellow Hopkins-Nanjing Center classmates. As a foreigner in a country like China, it can be easy to find someone almost every day with whom we disagree or at least have some significant difference in opinion. Experiencing this almost every day, I have become more acutely aware of the inability to accommodate differences in various localities back home as I hear my family and friends talk about their current experiences in their respective communities. I, now more than ever before, am realizing that many of us are atrociously horrible at accepting the fact that people are different than we are and talking to them like human beings. 

A few years ago, I came across a quote from the book No Greater Glory by Dan Kurzman. It is a non-fictional narrative following four US chaplains during World War II, chronicling the religious oppression and marginalization that existed in the US in the 1940s. At one point in the narrative, the four chaplains are sent to a military divinity school where they are trained before going to war. The following is a reflection by one of the chaplains on a speech given by the commandant of the divinity school upon arrival:

“’No one can give that which he does not have.’ If the military’s search for ‘fair-minded’ men had left any of the chaplains with doubts about whether they could fully live their religion while serving the army, [the commandant’s] speech erased it. As his comments made clear, in the days that would come, what the world would need were not men who sacrificed the core of who they were just to get along with others, it would need men whose foundation was so solid, they did not feel the need to oppress others.”

Many chaplains had a hard time serving an organization that specialized in killing, something they were vehemently against. Not only that, but they were expected to serve all soldiers of any religious persuasion, something difficult to ask in those days. The chaplains realized that to be grounded in your belief means not demeaning someone who thinks differently than you. They discovered that when you are grounded in your belief, it manifests itself as tolerance, that oppression is a sign of insecurity and hatred the mark of untrue belief when it comes to religious convictions. They realized that accepting others’ beliefs is not a threat to their own.

I believe this principle applies to many kinds of beliefs. In action, I believe we can know we are grounded in our beliefs when we choose to do as Ted Lasso says and “Be curious, not judgmental.” Like I said before, I am staunchly not a Marxist. I could have easily heard “professor of Marxist studies” and immediately shut down and stopped listening to what this man sitting next to me on the bullet train had to say about what he believes. While I didn’t feel the urge to oppress this man, you can imagine how a scenario like this plays out in any polarized community. 

Let us be so grounded in our beliefs, whatever they may be, that we do not feel the need to oppress others, but rather choose to be curious and not judgmental. 

Edited by: Sara Murphy