I believe in asking questions. And in the world I come from asking too many questions, asking the wrong kind of questions, asking questions that don't have clean, easy answers is almost the same as speaking blasphemy. I am a heretic, I am sacrilegious, I am irreverent towards God and all his ways. Because I ask too many questions.
But what if having faith has more to do with having questions than with having answers?
What if true faith, deep-down-at-the-core-of-your-being faith, has more to do with humility and the willingness to not know everything than it does with unwavering confidence in absolute truth?
What if true faith, bone-jarringly-honest faith, has more to do with the intentions of your heart than with the religious doctrines you follow?
What if true faith, bring-you-to-your-knees faith, has more to do with loving, supporting, embracing and nurturing acceptance of everyone (actually everyone, not just almost everyone) than with figuring out who is in and who is out, who is saved and who is lost, who is right and who is wrong?
What if faith and being part of the kingdom of heaven on earth has more to do with helping and encouraging and blessing others than with evangelizing and converting others to your views of religion?
Because what if the quality of our love is more important than the number of people who fill our church buildings or temples or mosques?
What if how we love others throughout our lifetime is actually more important to the well-being of our souls and the well-being of our world than whether or not we've done what's required to get to Heaven?
Because what if we spend our whole lives focused on salvation, our own salvation, saving others, teaching everyone we know how to live rightly and how to be saved, and then we die only to be reincarnated or only to find ourselves... nowhere?
What if in the end, after we all die, there is no such thing as Heaven and no such thing as Hell, but the entire focus of your life was who was saved and who was lost, who would live eternally with God and who would burn in Hell?
And when it comes down to it, sometimes the only convincing reason we can come up with for why it matters which religion a person believes in is that one religion is right and the others are all wrong.
And if someone believes in the wrong religion, then aren't they missing out on the opportunity to live for eternity in the presence of God?
But what if there is no Hell after death, or there is no Heaven after death?
What if instead, each of us chooses our joy and freedom or our bondage and slavery each and every day that we live?
And what if the real opportunity being missed is the chance to live every day with the blessing that comes with truly having unconditional love for every other soul on this planet regardless of their race, their religion, their political views, their priorities, lifestyle or opinions?
What if loving someone else, everyone else, is more important in the big picture, in the grand scheme of the cosmos, in God's plan for humanity, than whether or not I am right, than whether or not my religion is true, than whether or not I am going to Heaven after I die?
What if love is more important?
