Copyright 2016 Don Ray
Faith Crisis, Faith Freedom
Ever had a crisis of faith when you had to give up a dearly
held belief? I desperately dislike the
wrenching torments of such crises, but eventually am inevitably grateful for
them, whether addressing faith in a person, an institution, or a belief system.
I’m sure they must afflict any open minded person, anyone
willing to learn and grow, anyone questioning and searching. I don’t think real faith has much strength
without being exercised by crises of faith.
In a crisis of faith, reality keeps slapping you in the face
to wake you up to the fact that a core principle of your beliefs is clearly
mistaken. That in turns leads to the real problem.
If your interpretation of that verse or chapter or book or
testimony was wrong, that means your interpretation of any other verse or book
or testimony might be wrong. How our
minds do gymnastics to try to get around that conundrum!
That is perhaps the real basis of many people’s trenchant resistance
to gay rights. If people admit any error
in their interpretation of scripture and tradition on that subject, then all
their beliefs get called into question.
No! We cannot tolerate that! We will not tolerate that! It is far less disconcerting to ignore the
question and all the rational evidence contradicting our beliefs, it is even
better to ignore that whispering of the conscience of our heart, than to cast
into doubt our entire foundation of life!
Of course gay
rights, and civil rights of every sort, entail such prolonged struggle!
Eventually we are forced to concede that our beliefs are
just that, our beliefs. We are fully responsible for them. If faced with incontrovertible evidence that
we are wrong, the ensuing audit of our beliefs to determine what else might be wrong is really an audit
of our soul, an assay of the state of our spirit.
When the carpet of our beliefs gets pulled out from under
us, we can no longer rely on the family and institutional source of those
beliefs. Disproving one belief casts all
the others into doubt. And horror of
horrors, we are forced to accept personal responsibility for what we believe!
The mind and logic and intellect can undo beliefs. But only the heart and soul can allow beliefs
to take root. The forced assessment of
our beliefs is a forced personal inventory of who we are at the deepest
level. Of course we want to avoid that!
Of course we shirk that
responsibility!
And that is why revolutions of liberation, the logical-
rational- fact based- and common sense inescapable conclusions that would
liberate ethnic groups, racial groups, gender groups, religious groups, and
political groups, inevitably lead to a far greater liberation of the people
whose beliefs have to be wrenchingly changed in order to accept the other
person’s liberation.
The person gaining civil rights is simply finally getting
what they always wanted. The person who
has to accept the liberation of that other person is being freed, albeit
unwillingly, to assess the inherited belief systems that shaped their life and
behavior, and thereby freed to sculpt anew their own life foundations.
Copyright 2016 Don Ray
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