i represented the mormon faith yesterday at an interfaith thanksgiving meeting. i gave a little talk, and my seven year-old son read alma 37:37 from the book of mormon:

counsel with the lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto god; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day.

he did a fantastic job. i have more gratitude in my heart for my children than i have for anything else in my life.

i’ve been to a number of inter-religious meetings over the past couple of months, and i’m beginning to receive invitations from people in the orange county and irvine interfaith community to become more involved. i’m wondering if i really want to invest the time in this, however. i hope you’ll excuse me while i think out loud.

i am beginning to wonder how successful some of these dialogues are. many of the people that participate are there because they are already committed to focusing on the commonalities between their belief systems and cultures, and they already have a healthy respect for different approaches to god and the search for truth. the people who speak at these things are preaching to the proverbial choir. could our time be better spent on other things?

i love speaking to people who accept that there are, as gandhi said, ‘religions are different roads converging on the same point’. in contrast, i get angry when i talk to people who feel that their way is the only way to god, and who feel that all other approaches are in error. i wish i didn’t feel this way, and i feel that there is some immaturity in me that needs to be fixed, but that is how i feel. i think that it is arrogance to claim that ‘me and my group are saved, and you and yours are going to hell unless you believe as we do.’ i feel that this divisive exclusivism is an untruth. i propose to you a new litmus test of the humanity and veracity of a belief system: if they claim to be the only path to god and/or truth, then that claim is false. maybe we can call it the postulate of exclusivism.

the primary determinant of one’s belief system for the majority of the world’s population is location: if you are born in india, you will most likely live and die a hindu. most religious people in thailand are decided buddhists, and in saudi arabia are devout muslims. the faithful in each of these religions have convictions as strong as that of the strong baptist from the bible belt here in the united states.

as a secular humanist trying to learn what the ancient faith traditions have to offer, i’ve come to at least one conclusion at this point:

each religion brought incredible positive value to the world at the time of its inception: for example, both jesus and mohammed were strong advocates for the rights of women within the context of history and culture. the ideas that the leaders of these respective faiths were progressive in their time. however, inasmuch as a religion loses that progressivism and solidifies time-bound teachings and tries to apply them to our modern cultural context, they have lost much of their positive value. the islam of a millenium and a half ago gave women greater rights and protected them, and the same principles applied today suppress and enslave many muslim women, especially when compared to the greater freedom and equality they can experience outside of strict islamic countries.

buddha once taught that a man was on a journey and found a great river blocking his path. the man took branches and vines and fashioned a raft and was able to cross the waters. out of gratitude to the raft, the man foolishly decides to continue his overland journey whil carrying the heavy raft.

i feel that many religious doctrines and teachings are like the raft. they help us in one context, but we continue to haul them around after their usefulness has ended. they become burdens. liberating teachings can become enslaving shackles.

we need to have the wisdom to discern which teachings are still applicable to us today, which need to be adapted, and which need to be discarded completely. if necessary, we need to have the courage to discard the raft::