Believers

Conviction, especially when one is moving from a skeptical position, often borders on the fanatical.  As I look around today, many from my generation have moved from taking from society to giving back.  Their transition from consuming, acquiring, and exploiting to altruistic, compassionate, and engaged is a miracle shaped by awareness, experience, and conviction.  The combination has led to approach that includes convicting others that they are right! 
A similar process can be seen in the last twenty years on Wall Street.  Eighties greed moved to a more constrained approach to business.  Slowly, but resolutely, a new management generation emerged that knew little of the past.  As the natural pressures of business enveloped their roles, a new conviction emerged.  Gone was a perspective of multiple quarters, the one at hand is the only one!  Balance gave way to view that could rarely see beyond revenue and compensation.  It's the eighties redux with new converts. 
The process of believing can be good or bad.  Here are a few suggestions when you come to a new idea.  First, remember that many new ideas are not.  Ideas have a way of reinventing themselves with new jargon.  Second, recognize the natural response that will overtake your decision process.  You will believe!  You follow and embrace!  You will invest and act on your convictions.  Third, evaluating the new framework against a standard of truth remains critically important.
A great risk occurs in how one evaluates these new ideas.  Many, including myself, do not evaluate the idea at all!  We believe it is true, so we act on it.  We think we know what we are doing, so we infuse our lives with the new conviction.  We often end up living with twisted thinking that is only truth within our minds.
The only alternative is to remain ground in Divinity and open to the Spirit; truth will strengthen, anything else will weaken.
“Simon himself believed and was baptized.  From that moment he was like Philip's shadow, so fascinated with all the God-signs and miracles that he wouldn't leave Philip's side.” (Acts 8.13)