It’s kind of baffling to me to believe anything firmly without proof. It makes me wonder, if given new information, where do you go from there? Do you ignore it, sticking to your faith? Do you consider it and perhaps change your mind? Do you allow yourself to grow? Do you grow by allowing for nothing? Is your faith protected by a fortress, a picket fence or an invisible fence? Is there no fence at all?

My husband and I had a long conversation yesterday about faith, religion and the universe. It began talking about Columbus discovering America, and the progression of discovery about the world and the universe. First we think the world is flat. Then it’s said the world is round, and eventually proven. Then we learn the world is round and also BIGGER than we’d imagined. Eventually we develop means to travel the entire circumference of the world, and eventually do so without dying! 😛

The universe has been similar. Each time we learn more about the universe our understanding of life broadens. We see more of the full scope of just how big our universe is and how much we can see. Does the world stop when you can no longer see anything? Is the universe infinite or  does it have an end? My logic tells me there must be an end… but that maybe there isn’t. I’ll probably never know. At present it would be impossible to travel to the ends of the universe and see for myself so I personally take comfort in the knowledge that I don’t know. I’m okay with that. The idea that something can be bigger than I could possibly comprehend can be staggering – can make one feel very small indeed, but it doesn’t necessarily bother me.

I feel similarly about faith. I have not seen God. Nor spoken directly to him as far as I’m aware. I do not know which religion is “right” and I’m inclined to say “none of the above” but that doesn’t make any of them “wrong” to me – simply… fallible. We cannot hope to truly know and understand something we can’t see or touch, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have faith in something bigger than ourselves. I find it easier to understand faith when I accept that I don’t understand it. To believe in something bigger than myself when I accept that I have no idea what that something is  – no let me rephrase that – when I have several ideas and consider any of them as likely as the other when all is said and done.

I can tell you, “I don’t believe in organized religion,” maybe tell you I’m “agnostic” but putting a label on a faith which will likely be forever evolving seems silly. Why stifle myself? Why hold myself back from future developments? Maybe today my faith is flat. Tomorrow I might discover it is round, and I’ll grow within that new set of knowledge. A year from now I might discover my round faith to be BIGGER than I ever imagined. Years later, I might learn ways to look inside my faith that I never could before – new ways to travel within it and learn more, faster and more efficiently. I’m a work in progress and so is my faith. When will I have all the answers? I’d venture to guess that when that happens I won’t be here to tell you if I was right or you were wrong. In the meantime, may I suggest that we all just get along? Or would that be too corny or maybe just impossible? I still say we could try.

If you believe that your God wears a green suit on Tuesdays and the man down the street swears he only wears red on Tuesdays and never eats meat… Does that mean one of you should die? That one of you is so wrong about their faith that surely they will never be happy in their afterlife? Honestly? Isn’t it more important that both you and the man down the street lead good lives, try your hardest not to hurt others and remain open to new information? Maybe God never wears clothes at all, and lives in a nudist colony? Who cares?

I know it’s bigger than that, and your reasons for creating a place and a time are more vast and complicated. You have historical documents referencing things and stories passed on from generation and generation. You had a dream. That’s cool. I had a dream, too. Later I woke up and continued living. Maybe someday God will speak to me, he’ll show up all shiny and brilliant and tell me, “Jen, you are wrong. And this is the truth.” If he does, I’ll listen and I’ll take into consideration all that he tells me and compare that information to all that I know. And I’ll come to a new conclusion than my conclusions today. But honestly that shouldn’t be difficult when all I’ve arrived at today, is that, “I don’t know.”