What Do You Believe?

I found myself pleasantly surprised at my family's Christmas gathering this past weekend.

One of my family members and I have had some disagreements online about theological beliefs he holds and I do not.

At our Christmas party though, he addressed this tension with a very open question:

"What DO you believe?"

The Hole That's Left

My blog posts focus heavily on theological concepts I no longer hold to be true or actively disbelieve.

But that doesn't answer what I do believe.

The first answer that came to my mind and lips was hard to express:

"I'm still figuring that out."

When you leave a religion like the LDS church, it tends to leave a really big hole. The church defines so much of who you are, how you see the world, what you value, where you find meaning.

Take it away, and you're left with... space. Empty space that needs filling.

But not with the same thing. With something you actually choose.

What We Talked About

I've never been the most verbally expressive person, and this family member carried most of the conversation. I'd chip in here and there where I felt I had something meaningful to say.

Not saying what he said wasn't meaningful. He shared some interesting insight. I felt like it was a good exchange of ideas.

I told him about some Buddhist and Eastern philosophy and practice I've started exploring. I told him how I see the world through a more naturalistic lens now rather than any kind of supernatural one.

One thing we found we agree on: the more we learn, the less we realize we know.

With the vastness of human understanding, and that which lies outside it, our perspective is bound to shift as we gain more knowledge. We go through transitions.

And if our perspective doesn't shift as we learn? I'd ask if you're doing it right.

Bodhicitta: Breathing In the Bad

I shared with him the concept of Bodhicitta meditation.

The Buddhist philosophy is that you breathe in the bad. Not as a means of internalizing and bottling it, but as a means of removing it from the world.

Kind of like a vacuum cleaner.

You're pulling in the dirt, but not to make it part of you. You're pulling it in so it's no longer there for someone else to encounter.

It also helps you understand yourself and have compassion for others.

As you experience unwanted things such as pain, sorrow, grief, you remember that you're not the only one going through them. The chance is that what you're feeling is also being felt somewhere in the world right now.

With over 8 billion people on the planet, it's pretty much impossible that at least one other person isn't feeling what you are at any given time.

Breathing in the bad allows you to feel it, to understand it, and then to show compassion to others who are also experiencing it.

And then you breathe out the good.

You still rejoice when good things happen and relish them for what they represent. But then you send them back out into the world so other people can experience them.

He seemed to resonate with this.

It had been a long time since we'd had a deep conversation like that. And I've carried his question with me since that night:

What DO you believe?

I Believe (Savage Garden)

Almost immediately after the party, I thought of the song "Affirmation" by Savage Garden.

This song came out when I was a teenager and always kind of resonated with me.

Some of the key lines that still resonate today:

I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do

I believe that beauty magazines [and social media] promote low self esteem

I believe you don't know what you've got until you say goodbye

I believe that trust is more important than monogamy

I believe the struggle for financial freedom is unfair

There's something powerful about a song that just lists beliefs. No argument. No defense. Just: this is what I think is true.

The Articles of Faith I Don't Have Anymore

Being asked "What do you believe?" reminded me that I no longer have the Articles of Faith to fall back on.

Thirteen statements. Memorized. Ready to recite at any moment pretty much from the moment you turn 8 years old.

Clear answers to exactly what I believed about God, scripture, ordinances, organization, authority.

There is no atheist scripture that offers an equivalent.

Atheism answers only one question: Do you believe in a god or gods?

If the answer is no, congratulations! You're an atheist.

But that doesn't tell you what you do believe. Just what you don't.

So I'm building it. Slowly. In pieces.

My Articles of Belief (Draft Version)

I decided to draft my own articles of belief and this is what I came up with:

1. I believe that people are neither good nor bad by nature.

We are a wonderful mix of both, with some embodying more of one than the other. And that mix can change over time.

You're not inherently evil. You're not inherently good. You're human, with the full range of human capacity. For kindness and cruelty, generosity and selfishness, growth and stagnation.

2. I believe that we are natural products of an extremely vast cosmos.

We don't know and probably can't know everything there is to know. But that shouldn't stop us from exploring.

The universe is 13.8 billion years old. We've been here for less than a blink. There's so much we haven't discovered, can't comprehend, will never understand.

And that's okay. The mystery doesn't require a god to be meaningful.

3. I believe our story as a species is continually evolving.

We change the ways we live, the food we eat, the shelters we build, the people we accept and reject, the moral codes we live by. These things change generation by generation.

And we will continue to do so as long as we don't meet our own extinction event.

There's no fixed "natural order." No eternal law written in the cosmos. Just us, adapting, learning, changing.

4. I believe that the greatest evil in the world is authoritarianism.

This comes in numerous forms: political, religious, social, familial. And all should be pushed back against as vehemently as possible.

Any system that demands submission, that punishes dissent, that claims to know what's best for you better than you do...that's the enemy.

Not doubt. Not questions. Not leaving. Not the natural man. Authoritarianism.

5. I believe that when we die, we return to the same state we existed in before we were born.

A state of complete unawareness.

Our molecules and energy will be repurposed and recycled. In that way we will continue on, but we will not know it.

That's not nihilistic. That's just real. And it makes this life, the one we're actually living, more precious for its scarcity.

6. I believe that the greatest language mankind has conceived of is music.

Nothing stirs my spirituality as much as music does.

Words can explain. Art can show. But music? Music bypasses all of that and goes straight to something deeper.

It can make you feel things you don't have words for. Connect you to emotions you didn't know you had. Remind you that you're not alone in what you're experiencing.

And there have been times when raising my voice in a chorus with others is the greatest magic I've ever experienced.

7. I believe that spirituality has nothing to do with the supernatural.

It is simply a state of awe and wonder and feeling connected to something outside yourself.

You don't need God to feel spiritual. You just need to be present enough to feel the weight of existence, the beauty of connection, the vastness of what you're part of.

Sitting in a dark room with Christmas lights. Listening to Mannheim Steamroller. Watching the stars. Holding someone you love. Overlooking a valley from a mountain top.

That's spirituality.

8. I believe that spirituality is something up to the individual to determine.

What is spiritual to me may not be spiritual to you. And that's okay.

We all have different things that stir us. Different experiences that make us feel connected, alive, aware.

You don't have to validate my spirituality for it to be real. And I don't have to validate yours.

9. I believe that our relationships should be ours to determine.

As long as there is understanding and consent between all parties involved, the structure of our relationships is no one else's business.

This is not an expression of hedonism. It's an expression of the right we have to self-identity and self-expression.

Who you love, how you love, what commitments you make, they are yours to define.

Not the church's. Not the culture's. Not tradition's. Yours.

10. I believe that my beliefs are free to change and shift as my experience expands.

What is true today may not be true tomorrow. And that's not a failure. It's growth.

I used to think changing your beliefs was weakness. Evidence that you never really knew in the first place.

Now I think: changing your beliefs as you learn is integrity.

Holding the same beliefs despite new evidence isn't faithfulness. It's stubbornness.

I reserve the right to change my mind. To learn. To grow. To become someone different than I am now.

That's not betrayal. That's being alive.

Still Figuring It Out

These aren't polished. They're not comprehensive. They'll probably change.

But they're mine.

Not handed to me by an institution. Not memorized from scripture. Not inherited from culture.

They're something I felt my way into as I wrote them.

Chosen. Built. Earned through the process of deconstructing and reconstructing.

And that matters.

Because for thirty years, I could tell you exactly what I believed mostly by reciting thirteen statements someone else wrote.

Now? I'm still figuring it out.

But what I've figured out so far? It's actually mine.

And that makes it more valuable than any certainty I used to have.

The Question I'm Still Carrying

My family member asked: "What DO you believe?"

And I'm grateful for that question.

Not because I had a perfect answer. But because it reminded me how I'm building one.

I believe in being honest about uncertainty.

I believe in compassion over judgment.

I believe in growth over consistency.

I believe in choosing my own meaning rather than accepting someone else's.

I believe in breathing in the bad so others don't have to carry it alone.

I believe in breathing out the good so it doesn't stay contained.

I believe in music, in connection, in the returning of light after the longest night.

I believe in questions more than answers.

And I believe that figuring it out as I go is not a failure. It's exactly what being human looks like.