I've been a Christian all my life. At eight years old, I made the decision to be baptized and become a full-fledged member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. You probably call us Mormons, and that's fine; just don't forget whose name our church meets under.
As a Latter-Day Saint, I believe many things to be true that cannot yet be proven by scientific means. There is pressure from the world today to produce undeniable evidence of every. little. thing that someone claims to be true. I can see the value on both ends; living by blind faith is dangerous and often reckless while living without faith can stop progress and growth.
Overall, I personally try to live a balanced lifestyle; making choices with as much caution as I do with instinct.
Like Aristotle taught in his Nicomachean Ethics, we can think of many human traits as having three degrees to them. For example, for the trait of bravery, one could be cowardly (lacking bravery), temperately brave (showing both caution and zeal), or reckless (being over-confident or over-brave, showing no restraint). This idea of temperance seems to encircle the whole of human life, and that's probably why it is commonly held as one of the most desirable human virtues.
The virtue Faith could also be placed on this spectrum. In modern terms, we might see the three degrees of faith as being rebellious, temperately faithful, and blindly obedient. In practice, these might manifest themselves in slightly different manners. To illustrate, let us say that you have lived in a place without any cars so that you had never even seen one before. A stranger drives into town one day and you stop to talk to him, finding out what this incredible machine is, what it does and the generalities of how it works.
You run home to tell your family all about this interaction and are met by your three siblings. One sibling hangs on every word you say, completely convinced that you are telling the whole truth and are an expert on the topic. The second sibling demands photographs, or it didn't happen and the third sibling asks after listening intently if they can go with you back to where the car was.
Agreeing to take them with you, the first sibling decides not to come, insisting that your word is enough to prove the existence of this magical transport. The second and third do come with you, but when you arrive to where you left the car, it has driven out of sight. The second sibling laughs at you, insisting that you made the whole thing up and were crazy to believe such a thing possible (and more than likely runs home to taunt the first sibling who believed you blindly.) The third sibling decides that they believe you, not only for what you said, but because they investigated for themselves, asking other people and finding the tire marks that the car had left behind.
By asking questions and seeking answers as best they could, the third sibling is most likely the one who will have the strongest foundation and best grasp of the world around them. The same is true outside of my allegory. Conversations about progress come easier when we each are temperate in more than just our diets. We need to be questioning our own beliefs and actions until we are completely sure of our foundation. Then, we can inquire about the decisions our leaders face or have made in a respectful manner. It's hardly ever true that a conflict is completely black and white or that the "right" answer will be found very far from the middle. But then again, it's the extremists that get our attention.
