Seeing Is Disagreeing - The Dress

A few weeks ago, my friend and colleague Christine Hong was visiting. She was here to lead a dialogue with Haroop Kaur on Sikh - PC(USA) relations, which was amazing. But in some of our downtime, she shared with me "The Dress." The original photo image was of a dress that a Scottish woman planned to wear to her daughter's wedding. When she sent a photo of it to her daughter, the bride and groom disagreed about the color; one saw it as white with gold lace, the other blue with black lace. They posted the image on Facebook and their friends also disagreed about the color. Quickly the image went viral and people around the globe disagreed as well.

What do you see? (courtesy of tumblr user swiked)

The thing is: so did Chris and I. I see white with gold, she sees blue with black. It seemed unbelievable to each of us that the other did not see what we did. We kept going back and forth with each other, "Really? But it's white!" "No, it's blue!" This felt especially surprising to me because we agree on just about everything. We've had so many theological discussions in which we are on the same page. We've talked about race, and gender, and sexuality. We've talked about the thorny issues of the day and even if there are nuances that we need to parse and ponder, in broad strokes we "see" the same thing.

As unreal as it was to me that a difference as distinct as this one was viable, I could not deny her vehemence that the dress was a completely different color in her eyes than it was in mine. Finally, I said to her that I thought there must be a scientific reason for it. Perhaps, I wondered, it had something to do with the cones in our eyes. Several years ago, I had seen a program on aging given on DVD by Professor Francis B. Colavita of the University of Pittsburgh. There was a portion that stuck with me because he talked about people with blue eyes having their eyes get lighter over time because the color literally dropped out of them. I wondered with Christine if my light blue eyes and her deep brown ones had something to do with the differential in our vision.

This got me thinking about those other issues and people with whom I passionately disagree about things that are not visual but still perception-oriented. Could it be that we both are "right" and the disagreement, whatever it may be, is about fundamental biology rather than ethics? Could it be that my interpretation of the Bible and someone else's have equal validity, and that our disagreement is more about biology than anything else?

Perhaps most importantly, if we are not able to come to see things the same way, is there a way that we can "agree to disagree" with respect and even Christian Unity? Can we remain the Church while also remaining true to ourselves and to the gospel as we each understand it?