🫀 TREE 182: How you believe is more important than what you believe

I don’t care what you believe about

• the existence of God, gods or other spiritual entities

• the meaning of life.

What I think matters is what kind of person your beliefs are causing you to become.

If you organise your life around principles of the Jedi religion and it’s helping you become a kinder, healthier, more integrated human, fine.

I’ve known atheists whose lives are full of depth and meaning and Christians who are empty and shallow. And vice versa.

I’ve known conservatives who are open and generous. I’ve known progressives who are narrow and small. And vice versa.

I’ve known complete loonies who do loads of practical good in the world and useless rational materialists. And vice versa.

Here’s a historical example. In the period leading up to the American civil war, about half the Christian churches in the country argued from a position of faith against slavery. The other half used their faith to argue for slavery. They all had roughly the same beliefs about God and Jesus. But the same beliefs pushed half of them towards freedom for all people and half of them towards continuing oppression and dehumanisation.

It’s like there’s an even corier core operating inside our core beliefs. When a person gets that right, they turn out fine. They do good. They live lives of significance no matter what they happen to believe about Life’s Big Questions.

What matters is not what you believe. It’s how your beliefs are shaping your life.

This post is part of the TREE introductory series

1. Consider a tree

2. Life is a gift

3. Life is a game

4. Grow slowly

5. How you believe is more important than what you believe

6. You’re not as broken as they say

Thanks for reading. If you haven’t already, you might like to

Grow slowly
Jeff

In 1997 Kylie Minogue released Impossible Princess. I’d never even heard of the album until this week. It’s a stunning piece of work. It sounds nothing like the Kylie you are used to hearing.

The Memory of TREE playlist – every song from every email: