Belief-o-Matic

According to the Belief-o-Matic Quiz at Beliefnet.com, the following three religious groups are the most similar to my own personal faith:

1. Bahá'í Faith (100%)
2. Reform Judaism (98%)
3. Liberal Quakers (96%)

Personally, after looking at each of the descriptions, I think that I'm actually most in tune with the Liberal Quakers. But if I was going to construct a sort of "What Dave Believes" along the lines of what Beliefnet provides for each of those faiths, it'd look kind of like this...

• Belief in Deity - I believe in one personal God Almighty, creator, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent--incorporeal spirit.

• Incarnations - Jesus was the uniquely authoritative, chosen Son of God whose supernatural wisdom and insight, revealed in his life and teachings, provide an ongoing example of how God calls us to live and relate to him. That said, we are all sons and daughters of God, and our main focus should be on experiencing and listening to God, whose love, presence, and direction are accessible to everyone.

• Origin of Universe and Life - God created all from nothing and controls all phenomena that modern science reveals about the origins of the universe and life. Science serves to reveal rather than dispute God's awesome creative powers.

• After Death - While I don't claim any certainty about the details of the afterlife, I do believe that those God deems to be faithful will find eternal reward and that those who reject God will be punished. I think our primary focus, however, should be on what we are called to do with the lives we have been given, not on what might come afterward. As the Liberal Quaker description put it: God is love, love is eternal, and our actions in life should reflect love for all of humanity.

• Why Evil? - I do not believe in the traditional notion of original sin and I have numerous questions about the idea of Satan. I believe that our physical nature is animalistic and that our tendency to selfishness is rooted in that fact, rather than in the external influence of a malevolent spiritual entity. Beyond our physical being, God has given us a spiritual nature through which he calls us to transcend our selfish, animalistic instincts and instead to live selflessly in love for God and each other. God gives us free will to choose between our selfish instinct and our transcendent calling. Sin, evil, and separation from God results when we choose self-interest.

• Salvation - I believe our main focus should be on living the kind of life that Jesus modeled and described. While no one can remedy their shortcomings and sin by their own actions, we have assurance that God is merciful and forgiving. That means that when we live our lives in faithful, prayerful obedience to the principles that Jesus announced as the Greatest Commands and when we approach God in humble repentance for our sins, we can have hope that he will find favor in us and redeem us in spite of our failures.

• Undeserved Suffering - God gave humans free will to cause each other either pleasure or pain, and an unfortunate consequence of our free will is that we frequently choose to live in such a way that we inflict suffering on each other. Even where natural events occur to create suffering, I do not believe that they should be understood as God's causing suffering for some punitive reason. I believe that God suffers with us and that he is also able to turn even very negative circumstances into something instructive or otherwise beneficial. Understanding that suffering is unavoidable in life, our goal should be to act as God's instruments in bringing comfort and healing where suffering exists.

• Contemporary Issues - I believe that human life and liberty are gifts to be valued. To the extent that abortion ends human life, I believe it is wrong. I believe that women and men are equally valued in God's eyes and that neither gender enjoys a monopoly on spiritual gifts or talents. I believe that God does not love homosexual people any less than he loves any of the rest of us. While I do not fault those who in the spirit of love express their belief that homosexual behavior is inconsistent with God's will, I believe that the question is not easily answered and ultimately rests solely between God and the individuals involved in that kind of behavior. Above all else, I believe that God's grace and forgiveness is sufficient to cover the sins of anyone who is sincerely trying to follow him, despite any imperfection in our understandings or actions.

Swiped from Elise's Live Journal

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

I ended up with:

"We need say no more about the likeihood of men in a free society submitting to such control-- or about their remaining free if they submitted. On the whole question, what John Stuart Mill wrote nearly a hundred years ago remains equally true today: 'A fixed rule, like that of equality, might be acquiesced in, and so might chance, or an external necessity; but that a handful of human beings should weigh everybody in the balance, and give more to one and less to another at their sole pleasure and judgment, would not be borne unless from persons believed to be more than men, and backed by supernatural terrors.' These difficulties need not lead to open clashes so long as socialism is merely the aspiration of a limited and fairly homogenous group."