Nowadays, faith is a touchy subject considering the person sitting next to you could be of a different faith and take offense to you expressing yours.  They might be Jewish, Lutheran, or even atheist.  Some people are pretty content on believing in their own religion; others are a bit open-minded.  Trying to explain your faith to others who are willing to listen is hard considering they could believe totally opposite.  For example, I’m Catholic and I believe in God…however, I cannot prove he exists.

 

God and his Son have been believed in, in my religion, ever since it was founded.  For centuries, people have continued my religion even though no one has ever been able to prove God exists.  Can they prove him now?  NO.  No matter how much evidence and how much the Bible explains him, no one has ever gotten rock-hard evidence God has existed.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe as much as the next guy, but I like to see things for myself.  Unless you can make him appear in front of me, I will always just believe in him purely due to my faith.

 

I believe in God 99%.  That other 1% has to do with science.  Science disproves everything supernatural and “other-worldly.”  I love science and everything about it, and even though my faith is strong, there will always be that teeny, tiny part of me that believes that science proves God, heaven, and everything else cannot possibly exist.  You can go ahead and say I’m wrong but, like I said before, you cannot say you’re right.  Science and religion have only one thing in common, they both cannot prove each other wrong.  Science may say God did not exist, but how do you know?  The same can be said for religion.  How do you know God DID exist?

 

Do I believe in God?  Yes.  Do YOU have to believe in him?  No.  You have your own mind, your own thoughts, and your own decisions.  God is one of the world’s biggest mysteries that can never be solved as long as you are alive.  To some people, God is real, for they have witnessed his hand at play.  For me, I’ve seen a sign of God through my entire life, yet I’ve never seen him.  So you might ask, “How do I witness something I haven’t seen?”  My answer to you is, “God is more than just a man, he is the love you have for someone else, he is the feeling you get in the center of your chest, he is the voice in the back of your mind, God is everything in me, he is everything in you too.  Why shouldn’t I believe in myself?”

 

We all have concepts that we believe to be true.  For instance, most of us have heard and believe as factual that “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”  Likewise, that the sum of “1 + 1 = 2” is a premise upon which virtually all of us would agree.

 

These concepts are at the core of our individual and collective belief systems, serving as building blocks upon which we mold more complex, future beliefs.  Much like building a house, our most elemental beliefs are deployed in the foundation of our belief system abode.  As our belief structure rises, we utilize these more fundamental beliefs in the fabrication of the compound and complex beliefs from which the upper floors are constructed.

 

While more complex beliefs are more readily modified, fundamental beliefs, once accepted, are rarely questioned, and the rigidity with which we hold them is in direct proportion to how close they are to the core of our belief system.  In a sense, we each have a vested interest in maintaining our own belief status quo, since the calling into question or modification of a core or fundamental belief may cause the entire structure to collapse, like a house of cards.

 

It is no surprise that once one adopts a point of view, he doggedly maintains its accuracy, even when presented with evidence to the contrary.  This is particularly true of political and religious convictions, and the reason for the common admonishment not to argue about these subjects in polite company.

 

It is the unusual individual who challenges commonly-held beliefs and, in so doing, establishes the foundation upon which to construct a new belief system.  Albert Einstein was just such an individual.  Einstein’s theories rocked the pillars of Newtonian physics and have served as a foundation for development of knowledge that may ultimately permit us to travel to the ends of the universe.  By the way, according to Einstein the “shortest distance between two points,” for reasons which I will not articulate, is a “curve.”  Someday in the future, perhaps Einstein’s beliefs will be deemed partially or completely erroneous and a new hierarchy of belief in the field of physics will be erected.  Nevertheless, his courage in challenging the scientific establishment has advanced man’s understanding of his universe and should, therefore, be applauded.

 

As our nation battles a deep recession and debates the propriety of change and the exact makeup that such prospective change will take across an array of issues from foreign policy to healthcare to the nature and role of government in our society, I am struck by the resistance of American leadership at both ends of the political spectrum to consider the issues at hand from a fresh perspective.  This, however, does not come as a surprise, since the very notion of change at its root dictates a modification of one’s fundamental beliefs, the very thought of which emboldens resistance in even the most open-minded of us.  Yet, progress and the advancement of humankind throughout the millennia have always demanded that new “truths” supplant old beliefs.

 

And so, as you consider the problems and options of today, challenge your beliefs, even those that you hold most deeply.  You, like Einstein, may discover a new “truth” that will radically change your life and perhaps the lives of many.