To believe or not to believe...

... that is the question.

I think that a lot of our time is spent trying to figure out if we can believe what we are being told.  As a child we believe everything we hear.  We somehow convince ourselves that a fat man can fly around the world all in one night in a sleigh that is being pulled by reindeer, of all creatures, so that he can deliver toys to all the children by stuffing himself through a chimney.  We believe that our teeth are taken away by a magical fairy who repays us with money.  We believe that a bunny brings eggs and baskets at Easter time.  As we get older and realize that these are simply stories, we become a little more cautious in what we believe.  We do not have such blind faith anymore.  Yet, in some instances, we are still asked to maintain that same child-like faith.  Religion constantly asks this of us.  We are asked to believe in something that happened long ago and to trust books that have been re-written and translated so many times that they could have lost some of the original meaning.

Even outside of religion we are constantly determining whether we can believe a source or not.  In research projects, part of the assignment is to assess how well the article or website can be trusted.  So often a source looks like it is believable, but then we discover it is not.  My favorite example of this is http://dhmo.org.  This site looks very scientific, but after consulting a different site, it is discovered that this "dangerous chemical" called Dihydrogen Monoxide is more commonly known as water.  It isn't just sites like these that we have to watch out for.  We have to determine whether or not we can believe politicians, commercials, salespeople, movies, books, even research.  We are talking about global warming in class right now.  It is hard to know who to believe, Al Gore and his strong belief in the human causes of global warming, or Michael Crichton and the picture he paints of global warming being more of a publicity stunt rather than a huge issue.  We are daily confronted with situations like these that cause us to question others and the information we are receiving.

This leads me to wonder, what would happen if we did not have to question the motives of others.  What if everything that we said and did was true?  What if no one lied or twisted the truth?  What if we were able to spend our time building each other up rather than wondering if the other person is going to tear us down? 

What if we were all genuinely good people?

I think one thing is for certain.  The world would be a much different place.