I believe we are approaching a developmental crossroads in the evolution of our human species, though we might be a little bit stuck and in need of some sort of inspirational push. With all the violent religious (and secular) fundamentalism in the past century, we need to come to a new covenant among more tolerant belief systems and traditions to accept “many paths”, acknowledging that your path through the transcending mysteries is just as appropriate for you as mine is for me. That is, as long as both of those paths follow a few basic principles, like the Golden Rule.

This was brought home to me when we took an old friend of the family (in Los Angeles briefly from back east) to our favorite neighborhood restaurant for dinner. She is a kind, gentle and thoughtful person, not ego-involved in the least. Though her religious beliefs are profoundly different than our own, getting cues that she would be willing to talk about those beliefs, our son Eric was brave enough to initiate and lead us through a discussion about our differing views of god, theology and tolerance of other beliefs.

I can’t recall what she said initially that put the subject out on the table, but Eric picked up on it and very respectfully asked her if she would be comfortable with him asking her some questions about her religious faith. She said she would be more than happy to and would like to ask us about ours (knowing us to be what politicians call “unbelievers” these days).

As an aside, I am still looking for a generic word that can encompass the belief systems of atheists and theists alike, to fill in the blank in the question, “What are your [blank] beliefs?” The first thing that comes to people’s mind is the word “religious”, though the word has connotations of participating in an organized denomination that is theistic.

But of course Buddhism is considered one of the world’s great religions yet belief in a deity is not a key part of its principles. I will sometimes say that my “religion” is Unitarian-Universalism (and most, but not all UUs would define this belief-system as a religion, even if they do not believe in deities). Depending on the situation, I often describe my religion as humanism (or even “Unitarian-Universalism-Humanism”, though that has so many syllables to verge on the ridiculous).

But then there are the people who would say that they don’t believe in any religion, and they aren’t necessarily all atheists. My mom for one always said that she believed in (and even talked to) “God”, though she also thought that organized religion was the scourge of the Earth.

Anyway… when asked by our out-of-town friend about his beliefs, our son Eric (who has participated in UU youth and young-adult groups for many years) said that he is an atheist, having found no evidence in his life that any deities exist. Our friend listened thoughtfully and with great interest.

I too sometimes define myself as an atheist (based on that same lack of evidence), but in this conversation I told our friend that I was a “humanist”. (I write the word without the capital “H” because I am not a member of any defined Humanist organization.) My choice of response to the religion question is generally political and calibrated to be the most effectively provocative. So in this conversation, “humanist” best characterized where I put my faith, compared to our friend, who many would call a “person of faith”.

In response to Eric’s inquiry, our friend shared that she believed in Jesus as her personal savior. Then he asked her about her beliefs regarding heaven and hell. She said that she was not sure what Heaven was, but she was sure it involved being “with God”. It followed that Hell was a place you would go and “not be with God”, which in her thinking, was as bad a place as there could be.

Then he asked her what she believes happens to people who don’t believe in God and don’t accept Jesus as their personal savior, including those who (through no decision/fault or their own) are never exposed to Jesus/God as a choice) and those (like him) who freely choose not to believe. Regarding the former group, she said she would expect God to be compassionate and give them the benefit of the doubt. Regarding the latter (including Eric), she said (as respectfully and apologetically as possible) that when they die they would not “be with God”.

The parameters of the conversation, as set down by Eric, were to explore each others beliefs but not challenge them. So we did not explore the ramifications of her statement that Eric and I “would not be with God”, which some would interpret as going to Hell.

It was a long and interesting discussion, in an area (theology) where most people fear (or wisely refrain) from going. Eric brought up “Pascal’s Wager” in the discussion. Pascal posited that if you nave nothing to lose if you believe in a god that turns out not to exist, but have much to lose if you don’t believe in a god that turns out to exist, so you might as well hedge your bets and believe. Eric and I were not taking that wager.

Thinking again about this conversation some weeks later, I do appreciate the precision of her language as to being (or not) “with God”. She did not say we were, “Going to Hell”, or even used the “Hell” word. But she sure felt we would be missing out, and spoke candidly to us in her engaging, respectful but steadfast way.

Why are our fundamental beliefs about the transcending mysteries of “Life, death and beyond” (sounds like a theological chain store…*g*) generally so difficult to talk about and avoided, like politics, in polite conversation? Isn’t this particularly problematic as our world becomes more of a “global village” where religious differences or various framings of “believers” versus “unbelievers” become such a source of discord and violence in our ever greater interconnection? Why can’t we all accept each other’s beliefs and acknowledge that there are “many paths” to heaven, the light, happiness, meaning, the greater service to humanity, the evolution of consciousness, or however one defines the point of living?

Does this rise to a level of crisis that is blocking or at least impeding our further human evolution? I think it does!

Many of us in the world today are convinced that our particular beliefs in those transcending mysteries are the right ones, and everyone else has it wrong (and may need to be redirected or otherwise dealt with by coercion or even violence by the deities, or us humans as their agents).

But all the rest of us that acknowledge that there can be “many paths” need to get together across the world and across the perceived chasms between various believers and unbelievers and build our covenant of “religious pluralism” (or whatever better words you could frame the concept with). We need to speak as confidently about this covenant as any person does who is convinced of the exclusive truth of their religious beliefs.

Acknowledging and championing “many paths”, whether we’re applying it to theology, education, or any other facet of human development, seems to me to be the key to our current impasse. One alternative would be to engage in a “culture war” (as some on the American right suggest), which ideally would just be more of a competition, but might become a more literal violent struggle. Another alternative is to build walls between us (good fences make good neighbors), agreeing to profoundly disagree and live separately and not interact.

“Many paths” may in fact be the most difficult of the options. For 180 years America has struggled with a public education system that, despite educational innovators and “alternatives”, always seems to move back to an OSFA (one-size-fits-all) system based on ever increasing standardization and regimentation. For at least 3000 years various “believers” have seen theirs as the one true faith, and commit themselves to spreading that truth to everyone else.

At a more personal level, since I don’t believe that a god or gods exists, how can I find a way to accept that those who do believe are not deluded?

How can we move to new ground (or return to old ground as theologian Karen Armstrong would argue) that a single “God”, “Goddess”, pantheon of deities, “the universe”, or however we frame it is just a metaphor for a deeper reality that we share but can’t (or at least don’t) fully know? We are all journeying and wrestling with these transcending mysteries as we make meaning of “life, the universe and everything”, and thus have many different “takes”, abstractions or models of what it’s all about.

Enough said for now… I would really be interested in your take on this.