Faith of a freethinker

In describing my religious views I use freethinker for want of something better, although I stretch the seams of my conscience even using that term. I am also uncomfortable with words like agnostic, atheist, humanist, and such because they seem narrow and reductive. I don’t believe that we as a species know enough to address the existence or nature of a supreme being, much less to hew to the specific beliefs of any religious group — or even to deny that a supreme being exists. Nevertheless, I consider myself a man of faith, and there are universal principles that I follow and that reflect that faith.

For many people, their religious views are shaped by their family. In my case, it was my mother who influenced my thinking about religion. She is closing in on 100 and is a wise woman despite increasing problems with her memory. I think that she would identify herself as a Christian, not so much out of a strong belief about Jesus but because Christianity was the common faith in her hardscrabble rural Oklahoma upbringing and remains a dominant current in the culture there today.