The article references a Baylor study that found young people exposed to social media are more likely to agree that it is "OK for someone of your religion to also practice other religions." Professor Blanchard concluded that "despite the best efforts of those who would make their traditions an all-or-nothing proposition, human beings have gone on picking and choosing, if perhaps never quite as unabashedly as young Americans in the 21st century."
I can't remember when I first heard the warning that you can't "cherry-pick" what you believe.
Maybe it was the fundamentalist church of my childhood where we were indoctrinated with the idea that if the Bible contained any error, then it was all false. Or maybe it was in seminary where we were taught that theology had to be "systematic."
All I know is that over the years, I have "cherry-picked' what made sense and worked for me...and in my experience in sharing with others, I have found that many do the same. The problem is that most organized religion prohibits (or at least discourages) doing that.
Part of my purpose in this blog is to promote the fact that we are free to "cherry-pick" what we believe from the religious "cafeteria." And we need to exercise that freedom and choose for ourselves
what we actually believe. As Lama Surya Das advises in his delightful book, Make Me One With Everything: [follow] "your own conscience, because only you can decide for you."
PS: This freedom to pick and choose is a process. As the Apostle Paul wrote, "When I was a child,
I thought as a child; but when I became an adult, I put away childish things."
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