How many of us grew up being taught what we should believe without any real explanation (or at least a reasonable explanation) as to why we should believe it? I suspect that to some degree this is true for all of us. And you know what? I don't necessarily think this is bad, with one very notable exception. Religion.
Virtually every other subject has an accepted amount of personal preference. My parents may be strong Democrats and may have taught me to become one, but if I later chose to become a Republican, they may be disappointed but certainly understanding of my views. The same could be said about almost everything, from cultural views to health care to medicine to literally anything. The reason is that, even if we feel strongly about our views, we understand that we are all human and every individual, like it or not, is entitled to his/her views.
Unfortunately, religion is the one exception to this, which is sad because it should actually be the "poster child" for this type of thinking. You see, with regards to religion, the "we are all human" aspect doesn't apply. By definition, we are talking about God, and in many people's minds God is the one thing we cannot question. Now there may be rationale to that reasoning if it were the case that we knew everything there was to know about God, but of course nothing could be further from the truth. In the grand scheme of things, we mortals know very little about this being called God, or Ala, or any of the other human generated names for this divine being. Interestingly, because the staunch believers feel God is perfect and should never be questioned, they apply the same logic to our understanding of God, which, as stated above, is a far cry from being perfect.
For most of my life I was willing to dismiss this issue as nothing more than an annoying human characteristic. In recent years, however, it has become harder to ignore the intolerance of staunch believers who insist that their views are right. Never mind that this type of thinking has caused more conflict, wars, killing and destruction than any other single issue in the history of the world. Never mind that so may people who believe they are absolutely right don't agree with each other, making at least one of them to certainly be wrong. I think it's time for a little analysis.
Here is the fundamental problem: When speaking of God, people believe that we cannot question or doubt anything we have been taught or we will fail in God's eyes. We believe we must hold true to our faith and our beliefs, even to our death, and in many cases, even to the death of others. Our belief in God is the one truly uncompromising issue in our lives. However, we know that we as humans are not perfect and that there is a never ending learning curve for us with everything in our human world. It is crazy to think that 2000 years ago people understood as much about biology, medicine, or the universe than we know today, because we have the benefit of 2000 years of added knowledge. Yet for some reason we feel comfortable constraining our understanding about God.
If we apply this same logic to our belief in God, it means we must also admit we were wrong about some of our beliefs, and we cannot allow ourselves to do that. Let's use the Catholic Church as an example simply because I am a Catholic (to be clear, the same issues hold true for all religions and faiths). If the Church insists we follow a belief, then later admits they were wrong, it brings into question all the beliefs they hold, which is unacceptable to them. Which means we are not allowed to grow in knowledge of our faith like we do in literally everything else. However, we all know the Church has been wrong on many things. People were once imprisoned for stating the earth is not the center of the universe. We've known for a long time that that is just silly. The Church was finally forced into admitting that. And there have been so many other examples as well.
Is it bad to be wrong? Of course not! In fact, it's human. But not when it comes to our faith.
The dilemma is, of course, if you cannot firmly hold to your beliefs, what is the basis for our belief at all? Little by little things change until our faith isn't anything like it once was. On the other hand, if what we believe is in fact wrong, how can we ever grow past that and move toward a truer belief?
This is a tough predicament. However, it is a predicament we humans have created for ourselves. These "beliefs" we are so passionate about rarely form the core teachings of any faith. Again, speaking from a Christian perspective, I would recommend that we turn to the source of our faith, to Jesus himself. What did he say about this sort of thing, about holding fast to rules and dogma? Interesting, he didn't say anything about it. Not one thing. He taught that God is love, that we should love God, and that we should love all people. What did he say about the sun revolving around the earth? Com'on man! He didn't waist his time with such trivial things. What did he say about gay marriage? Well, believe it or not, he said nothing. Granted he didn't endorse it, and I for one cannot say what he thought about it. But I can say that, according to the New Testament, he didn't comment on it at all. And you can go through virtually any issue we struggle with today and the same thing will apply; Jesus said God is love, we should love God, and we should love all people, period.
I find it ironic that the staunch believers who attempt to dictate our faith do not even follow the teachings of the person they base all their beliefs on. Well, I actually do read the Bible, and I actually do believe in Jesus, and I choose to follow his teachings before I listen to any of the zealots who are telling me what is right or wrong. Why is this so difficult? It shouldn't be. For me, it's the simplest thing in the world.
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