THE PREVIOUS TWO POSTS in this series, have discussed two opposing methods, practices, or disciplines. One of these, belief, is found in the priest/king spiritual tradition. The other, skepticism, is found in the emerging spiritual tradition.

"The battle between the priest/king model and the emerging, natural, model is not just fought on the political or religious stage, but within each of us, and daily."

How do these methods work in practice?

To begin with, when orthodoxy is involved it doesn't need to be a religious matter.

It can be the idea that a parent never did anything wrong or selfish, that things we were taught early on simply must true, that teachers or policemen or other authority figures are always on the side of right, that our favorite politicians never make a mistake, that our country is always right, that our spouses, or our children, our we ourselves are above reproach.

It can be the idea that some other group we consider lower on the moral hierarchy is indeed lower: less competent, less trustworthy, less clean, less deserving.

It can be any idea which we have previously accepted and are tempted to cling to in spite of evidence or reason.

When we are operating out of the priest/king model, and are presented with an idea or with evidence which contradicts the beliefs we currently hold, we attempt to discount the evidence, find arguments to counter the evidence, change the subject, or simply deny the evidence.

Our behavior amounts to an internal use of political rhetoric, where we are both the spinner and the spinnee.

These are things which we might often do in any case, of course, but if we are operating out of the priest/king model, we don't just do them because we don't like to be wrong, but because we feel a moral obligation to do them.

We are engaged in an intellectual battle, defending goodness against truth.

When, on the other hand, we operate out of the emerging model, the moral obligation goes in the opposite direction. We feel obligated to take contrary evidence into account, to question our own beliefs, to guard against believing that which we want to believe or consider orthodox without regard to reason or evidence.

Our behavior amounts to an internal use of scientific rhetoric, using argument to increase our own understanding and improve our knowledge.

And, in the case of skepticism, the practice is not even limited to Orthodoxies.

It applies to our entire understanding of reality—even to that driver who cut me off on the freeway this morning.

I want to believe that he or she is an insensitive jerk, who, having taken into account my right to be there, and the irritation their act would cause me, purposefully chose to cut me off anyway out of sheer selfishness and spite.

Skepticism, however, intervenes.

It causes me to doubt my assumptions, to ask which of them I actually have evidence for, to think of all the other possible explanations.

Maybe it was a mother, rushing a child to the hospital.

Maybe it was a husband who didn't see me there because his head is still replaying an argument he had with his wife over breakfast—or a wonderful romantic conversation he had with his wife over breakfast.

Perhaps neither of them saw me as the center of their morning after all.

The point is: I don't know.

All of us operate from each of these models at various times, and often we find ourselves torn between the two: part of us wanting to buttress the case for the received view at any cost, part trying to honestly weigh the evidence.

Sometimes the struggle between these two models can become very convoluted, as when we attempt to convince ourselves that we have, indeed, examined the evidence with an open mind, even though we haven't.

In these cases, a fundamental point becomes clear: the battle between the priest/king model and the emerging, natural, model is not just fought on the political or religious stage, but within each of us, and daily.

While it's quite true that the battle can be seen writ large on the national stage—those with a primary allegiance to the priest/king model fighting against the teaching of science in public schools, or, a generation earlier, against the extension of equal rights to all races—it is also true that the battle is being fought within our religious communities and political communities: both right and left.

Ultimately, the battle is going on in the heart and mind of each of us.

But belief and questioning are only two contrasting practices of the competing spiritualities...