What I Believe

It has nothing to do with Him.  Or Her.  Or whatever.

Unlike the Christians and Muslims in my life - and there are a lot of both - I don't believe that I have to believe to be rescued, redeemed, or saved.  I'm unconvinced that Mary and Mohammed were carried to heaven, or that Jesus was the incarnation of Him/Her/The Creator to experience life.  I'm still uncertain how being executed for trumped-up acts of treason qualifies Jesus of Nazareth to rescue us from ourselves.  And while its fantastic that his body vanished on the third day after his burial, and he started making poltergeist appearances to his closest friends, that's no more or less believable then the other miracles listed in other faiths.

Here's an interesting question:  What if the force of creation doesn't know how Itself came about?  After all - if Something existed before time, could It actually fathom Its own existence until It created a concept of then, now, and soon?

Assuming this might be the case, an experiment may be in order - to see if It can create the conditions that may actually be the foundations of Its own existence.  What if the soul is made in the image of God because we all potentially are God?  Obviously, one such universe experiment wouldn't be sufficient, so It would need to create an large - perhaps infinite - number of universes to test every tweak and twitch.

I can't lay claim to any original thought here.  Ann Rice wrote Memnoch the Devil, and Steven Brust wrote To Reign In Hell, both of which have given me pause and reflection.

But perhaps Sidhartha Budha has made me think the hardest.  Does belief or disbelief determine if our actions are good or bad?  Can we live a good life without a faith?  Can I work to become compassionate and enlightened, in effect rescue myself from myself, without needing divine intervention?

So right now, tonight, what I believe is that belief doesn't matter.  Its great that I do believe in a Creator - although I haven't decided just what that means - but my faith in that is irrelevant to my living a good, compassionate, right life.