faith in heaven vs. faith in hell

I’ve written a few posts recently trying (somewhat awkwardly) to express an idea that’s been on my mind a lot over the past few years: That I want to respect someone’s right to hold a particular belief while being more skeptical about their right to insist that others hold that belief. A few days ago, going through Day One’s “On This Day” feature, I found to my delight that I had written something to this extent a few years ago and then forgotten about it since.

I’m including it here because I think it captures some of what I’ve been trying to say better than how I’ve said it on the blog:

It takes a lot of faith in a religion to believe that it will take you to heaven—it takes a lot more to believe that it will send everyone else to hell. I think that first step is reasonable for the Church (or any other religion) and wouldn’t begrudge it of everyone. Based on everything I’ve been studying and learning over the past year or so, I’m not sure there’s enough there to warrant that second step.

I wrote this in May 2020, pretty early in my faith transition from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Community of Christ, and besides what I’ve already noted, I think it also captures one of the driving forces of my decision (sometime later) to move from one faith tradition to another. It isn’t that I thought that Mormonism had nothing to offer me, it’s that I didn’t think that it had firm enough of a foundation to insist that I (and my family) believe or behave in certain ways or risk regretting our choices in the eternities. That’s still how I feel—about the faith I grew up with, the faith I practice now, and basically any faith that’s out there.

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