We can’t truly know anything. What we believe is based on a preponderance of the evidence. We make observations and then we take our best guess, weighing what is believable to us. I might change my mind about anything when new information comes in.

As a child, I was taught to believe what I was told, and not to question it. I was told to reject scientific fact wherever it conflicted with our chosen or inherited dogma. Young children are predisposed to believe what their caretakers tell them, because, for example, a toddler doesn’t know the danger of a cliff or a hot stove. At that age, survival may hinge on abiding by the “DON’T!” or “STOP!”

Those early childhood lessons tend to stay with us, as any religious leader or teacher knows.

I often heard the answer “because I said so,” and as an adult I informed my mother that that was no longer good enough.

There is a belief in my family that I was told in art school to renounce my faith. It didn’t happen exactly like that. I was urged to open my mind, and to express my demons as well as my angels… my feminine side as well as my masculine side. I was offended at that admonition, because I wasn’t ready to hear it yet.

I still held tightly to what I knew, and I didn’t know much. I had very few options. I had a lot of doubts, which I begged God to remove.

I was influenced very much by the opinion of others.

There may have been some culture shock when I moved from Michigan to Liberia, or from Liberia to Nigeria, but let’s face it, we brought our culture with us.

The big culture shock came for me when I graduated from Bible School, and was, for the first time in my life, outside of a formal religious institution. First, there was family, and always church. There were Christian schools and camps. I graduated from a very conservative Bible School that was all about the rules. I accepted it all, even with the abuse.

I felt like a failure when I escaped from an abusive organization, and was told as I boarded a bus the morning of my 18th birthday, that I was walking away from God’s will for my life and would have to settle for second best from that day on.

All of this plays a role in my creative efforts now.

It is not my job to tell anyone what to believe, and no one has the authority or permission to tell me what to believe. All I need are the facts, and those are subject to change.

It’s like natural selection happening in my thinking. When better information comes to me, I adapt.