January's Word for the Month~ "Believe"

The other day I was watching the 2005 movie "Serenity" which was the finale of a failed TV series called Firefly. I was turned onto the show by a friend of mine in China and was really disappointed when it was cancelled after only 14 episodes. Anyway, this movie was about a rebel group of space warriors who had banded together against the control and dominance of another powerful group called The Alliance. The rebels and the Alliance were both convinced that they had the true ideals about how life should be lived and the true way of viewing the world. In a very poignant scene, just before the most spiritual guy in the film dies, he says this, "I don't care what you believe, just believe!" I thought about that for a long time, and it just didn't settle with me. It didn't make sense. How can just believing in something be enough? Does believing in itself make something right, even if it's wrong? Is fervent belief in an ideal more powerful than the truth of that ideal? I don't think so. In our pluralistic society, no one wants to stick out their neck and say that they think they are right and someone else is not. We don't want to appear judgmental or insensitive so we have made it Ok for everyone to be right and no one to be wrong. Really? Does that make any sense? How can everyone be right, and no one be wrong? It's impossible. That's not how the truth works. There's ultimately always a right and a wrong. The problem is we're cowards. We don't want to take a stand. I'm not saying we need to see everything in black or white. There are many shades of gray in life as well. We don't need to beat our opinions or beliefs into other people in condemning hurtful ways either, but we do need to figure out what we believe and why we believe it. Over the years I have come to the conclusion that it's the object of the belief rather than the belief itself that really counts. I agree it's important to have beliefs and convictions, but it's more important to believe in something that is fundamentally true and sound than just to "believe it something."