What matters is simple

In the 2021 movie "Belfast," the divisive and violent time known as the Northern Ireland Troubles is seen through the eyes of a little boy named Buddy, played splendidly by 11-year-old actor Jude Hill.

Hill may be nominated for an Oscar for his powerful performance, which is a fictionalized portrayal of the growing up years of Kenneth Branagh, who directed the film.

Buddy is from a Protestant family who finally escapes the conflict, which -- to put it in an oversimplified way -- was mainly political in nature but was also at least partly about strife between Protestants and Catholics.

Resolution would finally come in 1998 in the celebrated Good Friday Agreement after nearly 30 years of internecine battles.

In the last major scene of the film, Buddy takes flowers to a girl he has befriended -- and who he will soon leave behind as the family departs by bus, headed eventually for the safety of England.

After delivering his gift, Buddy approaches his dad for a short but important conversation.

To wit:

• Buddy: Daddy, do you think me and that wee girl have a future?
• Dad: Well, why the heck not?
• Buddy: You know she's a Catholic.
• Dad: That wee girl can be a practicing Hindu or a Southern Baptist or a vegetarian antichrist, but if she's kind and she's fair, and you two respect each other, she and her people are welcome in our house any day of the week.

The core of everything

A wise observer once said when a person fails at persuasion, there are two paths left to follow: coercion or toleration.

Coercion is the simpler of the two options -- using power and leverage to achieve a desired end (e.g., do something or be killed; do something or be fired; do something or be ruined reputationally).

Toleration is more difficult to navigate because you take yourself out of the center of the equation and give space to someone else's decision.

Perhaps the reason why the brief father-son conversation struck me at the end of this thoughtful motion picture is the parent takes the latter course.

It was a course this writer imagines Jesus taking.

Rich young ruler

In a tale recounted in three of the synoptic New Testament gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), Jesus is approached by a man with a question. We tend to conflate these accounts because only in Matthew is the questioning man called "young" and only in Luke is he referred to as a "ruler."

With apologies to the individual writers, here is a condensation of the basic story.

To wit:

• Man: What must I do to inherit eternal life?
• Jesus: You know the commandments.
• Man: Yes, I do and have followed them since childhood.
• Jesus: There is one thing you lack, then. Sell all you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.
• Man: At this, the man's face fell, and he went away sad, for he had great wealth.

In seminary, we would have called this a multivalent story, with many possible meanings.

Here's one.

The man wanted Jesus to say he was all right, that he was following the right path.

Instead, the man was told to step up his game, that his status quo approach to life wouldn't work in order to achieve his goal.

The man didn't like what he heard and walked away.

We never hear what happened to this inquisitive man; the narrative doesn't tell us, as the late radio commentator Paul Harvey might put it, "the rest of the story."

Jesus doesn't chase after the man to give him a fuller explanation of his thinking.

He lets him go.

Takeaway

There may be an everyday lesson here.

If coercion is the path we choose when persuasion doesn't work, we are opening ourselves to a lifetime of bitterness, of resentment, of "us-against-them," which is frankly almost everywhere these days.

The road less taken is to give freedom to the person who thinks differently.

Jesus did this and I'd rather follow his path than anyone else's.

What matters, then, may not be to our liking -- but it is simple.