The Moment Casey Gerald Realized The Importance Of Doubt

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In a recent powerful TED Talk, writer and business leader Casey Gerald used the metaphor of his experiences with his childhood faith to talk about the importance of questioning the people, institutions and forces we blindly believe in.

In a speech titled "The Gospel of Doubt," presented at TED2016 conference in Vancouver in February, Gerald recalled an important lesson he learned that he carried forward all of his life. Raised in a Baptist tradition in the South, he said his childhood church believed strongly that the second coming of Christ and the end of the world would happen on the night of December 31, 1999. But he said his church's prophecy never came to pass. 

"There on that night, I did not stop believing," Gerald said during his speech. "I just believed a new thing: That it was possible not to believe. It was possible the answers I had were wrong, that the questions themselves were wrong."

He ends his talk with a moving statement about the hope that he believes comes from questioning the institutions that claim to offer an easy salvation:

This doubt, it fuels me, it gives me hope that when our troubles overwhelm us, when the paths laid out for us seem to lead to our demise, when our healers bring no comfort to our wounds, it will not be our blind faith -- no, it will be our humble doubt that shines a little light into the darkness of our lives and of our world and lets us raise our voice to whisper or to shout or to say simply, very simply, "There must be another way."

Check out the video above to hear Gerald's entire TED2016 Talk.  
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