Beliefs Worth Examining
What would your belief system - your religion and politics, for example - have to do to cause you to reject it? It’s a question for our ideology-driven times.
Decades ago I believed in almost every facet of the Christian Nationalist dream, including their beliefs about sexuality. I ignored the human experience, following ideology instead. Then, as a chaplain in training, I sat by a gay man who lost his partner moments before. His racking sobs revealed his overwhelming grief. Wait, I thought. He really loved his partner. This relationship wasn’t the perversion I was told it was. There was more love in that room than in my own “straight” marriage. It was love. Pure love. It was the beginning of the collapse of my walls of belief about human sexuality. My former beliefs still cast long shadows.
As it often does, life poked other holes in my belief balloon. I was a Creationist. I ignored the problems with Creationism. Then, I learned about the microwave background radiation that fills all of space. The satellite pictures are below. By analyzing patterns in this primordial radiation, scientists can estimate the age of the Universe and understand its early conditions. My beliefs in Creationism rapidly deflated.
This map of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, imprinted on the sky when the universe was 370,000 years old, shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities.
I begin where I started. What would your cherished beliefs have to do to cause you to reject them? If there’s nothing that can prove them wrong, you should really question them. A time may come where, like I did, you sit next to a living contradiction to your beliefs, someone who proves them wrong. The tiny little voice you’ve been ignoring all these years will become louder. You might see politicians or religious leaders do things that violate your conscience, humanity, and even your beliefs that God is Love. Eventually, that heart noise will reach a crescendo and you won’t be able to ignore it. It will be better for you and for all of us to listen to that voice sooner rather than later. Silencing the niggling voice of conscience and doubt always costs us more the longer we wait. Don’t wait to re-evaluate.