One thing I have never understood about religion, whether it appears in the form of religion or not, is the insistence that, once one hops on board, they must immediately adopt dozens of beliefs that they have never thought through, and most certainly do not *actually believe yet. Whether it’s a fundamentalist brand of Christianity that demands you take on a belief in biblical inerrancy, a certain atonement doctrine, or a particular position on eschatology, as well as become immediately anti-LGBTQ rights and militantly pro-life, simply because you believe Jesus is Lord, or whether it’s certain brands of social justice-ism, which demand that, in addition to being pro-equality, one must be fully onboard with certain ideas on gun control, militantly pro-choice, incapable of taking away good ideas from people who may have said something offensive or insensitive at some point in their past, etc., one is forced by these groups to claim to believe things they cannot possibly yet believe. No belief is automatic. No one can just choose to believe things they have not given lengthy amounts of time to thinking through. And when you give in to the pressure to claim a belief in order to be a part of this group or that group, you damage your integrity and soul in ways you cannot possibly imagine.

Having a conservative view on abortion does not mean one must automatically have a conservative view on gun control, nor does having a conservative view on gun control mean that one must have a conservative view on abortion. You can only *truly have a view that you have taken the time to consider, dissect, deconstruct, reconstruct, and think through critically. I don’t care if it’s conservative, liberal, postmodern, enlightenment or religious ideology we are talking about; any group demanding automatic belief in a host of complicated ideas, simply because one agrees with one or two other points a group is making is behaving in a cult-like manner.

This sort of ridiculous thinking is destructive and divisive. It’s born from below, and therefore below us all. Believe what you believe because you actually believe.
Think deeply on all other issues, and don’t bow to pressure, even when it feels like the moral thing to do. You have to think to know what you believe, and when you’re in a place where you are not being given the space to think, it’s probably time to excuse yourself.
~Jeff Turner