I believe in questions

My Dad has started an email conversation with me, one I'm interested in pursuing, for now. He aske me a good, and a fair question:

What do I believe?

I hope to write here a series of beliefs that I have come to as I've abandoned my conditioned LDS beliefs, and stepped out into the world on my own.

First: I believe in questions.

I believe that a good question is more important than a good answer. I love the aphorism "be more wary of the unquestioned answer than the unanswered question". Cute, but telling.

For so long I felt comforted and frustrated with the fact that everything in the Mormon world has an answer. You may not be able to answer the question yourself, it may be "one of God's mysteries" or something you have to "take on faith", but for every question there was an answer- if only God would get around to answering it.

Practicing medicine taught me otherwise.

For many questions the only real answer is "I don't know". Patients are willing to hear that answer if they realize you're not answering out of sloth or indolence, but rather out of honesty. And the reality is that we often don't know answers to questions, especially the "why" questions. . Why does one person have a horrible random infection, or cancer? We know what some of the pertinent risk factors are, but we don't know why exactly some get sick and others don't.

I love questions, and I love answers. But I've also studied enough to know that often the big questions remain, and the answers change over time. A little humillty as regards our answers seems appropriate.

So_ I believe in the power of questions, and the importance of continuing to ask them, and being open to the idea that answers, even if they arrive, might be subject to future change.