My Credo

By Klym ~

Regular readers on this site probably know that I attend a Unitarian Universalist "church" where I fellowship with atheists, agnostics, humanists, deists, former Jews and Christians, Buddhists, and other interesting people. I love this place and the people there. It has been so liberating to me to gather with others who don't claim to have all the answers to the questions in life and who encourage me to pursue my own individual path to truth and knowledge. I came to this church late in life, still a recovering fundamentalist and it has been a long, hard road away from the cross of Christianity.

Buddhism (Photo credit: shapour bahrami)

Our minister is on a six month sabbatical so we are having all kinds of interesting guests in the pulpit--rabbis, Muslims, Buddhists---you get the picture. This past Sunday we had a retired minister who, in his youth, was a Catholic; in early adulthood he was a Baptist minister, and is now an agnostic\atheist. Anyway, he told us his own personal beliefs now and then challenged us to write down our own beliefs, or "credo", before the end of the week.

So, I have written mine and would like to share them with my ex-christian online buddies. Here they are:

My Credo--or What I Believe Today

1. I believe in the power of kindness.
2. I believe in the power of relationship---to heal and to encourage and to make life worth living.
3. I believe that this life is all we have and therefore it is imperative that I treasure each moment and that I become part of the solution and not part of the problem.
4. I believe that life is a gift for which I am very grateful.
5. I believe that there are no satisfactory or easy answers to explain the suffering in the world and that it is my personal responsibility to relieve suffering in the world around me as much as I possibly can.
6. I believe we are the masters of our own destiny and that we cannot depend on supernatural, mythical forces or beings to protect us or plan for us.
7. I believe we create our own purpose in the world.
8. I believe that our words are powerful and that we should choose them very carefully.
9. I believe that many things in this life are impossible to explain in any satisfactory way.
10. I embrace the mystery of life and am no longer frightened by my doubts and skepticism.
11. I believe that we should use only kindness and love to influence others and that fear and guilt should never be used to control other human beings.

What I No Longer Believe

1. I don’t believe that we need to be saved by the blood sacrifice of another human being or "god".
2. I don’t believe in a heaven or a hell or any kind of afterlife or reincarnation.
3. I don’t believe that we are rewarded for being good or punished for being bad in an afterlife.
4. I don’t believe we can comfort ourselves or others with trite phrases and meaningless platitudes.

So, there you have it. That's what I believe today. Tomorrow may be another story....but for now, it is very liberating to put it in black and white and let it fly through cyberspace. Peace out!