This has been an interesting Sunday. Wha …

This has been an interesting Sunday. What a world we are in when a Mormon and a Muslim can have an anonymous, civil discussion of belief from their own homes across the globe.

Don’t worry, I won’t get preachy, just amazed at the irony of this age of communication combined with the general movement away from any belief. It is almost as if technology is destroying belief rather than encouraging it through communication. Of course that is only an impression.

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It’s no secret I am Christian and LDS (Mormon). Oops, marginalized already aren’t I.

I generally refrain from discussion of belief, or even bringing attention to it really, because of the heavy weight of assumption and bigotry immediately assigned to most believers today–especially to us Mormons. Tell people I grew up in Utah and I can feel the wind from their eyes rolling and darting around searching frantically for the closest exit.

It’s O.K. I understand. So much hate and suffering have happened in the name of religion through the ages including today that, like Ivan Karamozov, I very seriously question God myself, and that’s a good thing. We should constantly question what we believe, test it, revalidate the truth we have found. Belief, like anything, needs cultivation and validation to grow. Stagnated, dogmatic belief has never served humanity well.

I get exposed to a lot of middle-eastern traditions being a programmer. One day, over some mango pickle and bread, a very good Hindu friend and I discussed where our very different beliefs might converge someday. We concluded:

The important thing is that we believe in something.

I keep coming back to that. Sure it is easy to say belief is foolish, but that is easy, even cowardly. It takes courage to face the big questions head on without brushing them aside for lack of time or other priority: Why the heck are we here? “To love and learn to be loved,” like Baz Luhrmann says in Moulin Rouge. That’s his take, sounds pretty good. Then there are the other big ones: Where did I come from? Where am I going? And perhaps the biggest of them all:

Did universal values come from God? Or did God come from universal values?

I don’t mean to sound pedantic, pretentious and certainly not pious, just curious is all. Why have people seemed to stop believing anything? Science has certainly advanced us a long way but it does not answer all the questions.