The Right Way Of Thinking

Steve Frazee, the Executive Director of SBNR.org responds to the pastor:

Hello Jason,

Thank you for taking the time to email us at SBNR.org and to open a dialog. We are honored by your inquiry and its respectful tone.

In response to your question, SBNR.org isn’t telling you or anyone else how to think. This is not our organization’s mission. Our mission is to provide information, education, and inspiration from a variety of spiritual perspectives, many of which conflict with each other.

Our statement, “The staff at SBNR.org believes that all religions and philosophies contain some truth, but that no one religion or philosophy contains all truth,” is a statement about our organization but not a statement about SBNR people, you or anyone else. Please understand that SBNR.org does not speak for SBNR people; SBNR people speak for themselves.

To use your language, we are telling you about how we understand religion and philosophy. It’s a statement about us, not about you. You are welcome to disagree with our perspective and, if you do, that’s fine; you are free to have your own perspective. Another of SBNR.org’s core values is the belief that every individual has the right to hold his or her individual beliefs as part of his or her unique spiritual journey.

I should also mention that we are amending that specific phrase and are replacing the word, “truth” with the word “wisdom”. The word “truth” is a tricky word that leads into discussions of absolute versus relative truth, which becomes too esoteric for our purpose.

The point of the statement is to share clearly the organization’s perspective. As an organization, we are not anti-religious. We find wisdom in all religious traditions. But we do not believe than any one tradition holds a monopoly on wisdom. Specifically, we believe that any group or person that believes they have cornered the market on wisdom can be suspected of missing something important. This is why we believe that as an organization there is much more for us to learn as well.

Thank you for writing, Jason.

Steve Frazee
Executive Director, SBNR.org