They say faith can move mountains, but does that still stand if we all have different faiths? One of the most beautiful facets of the human species is how diverse we are.
People come from all corners of the earth with different skin pigmentations, different languages, and different customs; it’s what makes us unique and special. Different belief systems are also crucial to the way we live our lives. While our beliefs have caused a lot of positivity in the lives of different individuals, they have also been a factor in a lot of hate and war.
We live in a world where certain people will cause you pain if your style of living or the way you look doesn’t correspond to their own. What happens when you open up your eyes and realize that the world you live in isn’t as one-dimensional as you thought? Will you accept it and allow it, or will you refuse it try and to change it?
Quite often we don’t get a say in who we want to be as children, and quite often we are told what is best for us because we simply don’t know any better. Our choices as children are limited beyond our control; we become desensitized to the world outside of what we grow up around.
As a child you don’t have a choice as to what religious organization you want to be a part of. You attend whatever church you go to because that’s where your family takes you. As children we are natural born pleasers. There’s a reward to being obedient, and when we see how much our parents react positively with that obedience, we continue to do what they want us to, and we get a satisfaction from that ourselves.
For the most part children don’t want attention; they want to feel accepted, and that is why we naturally continue following the paths most wanted by our families.
Growing up a Christian, I didn’t really understood the meaning of it until further on in my life. Basically I was taught that if I wanted to go to heaven, I needed to follow everything that was taught to me. If I had strayed from that path, I would most likely go to hell.
No one wants to go to hell! So as I continued growing, I kept doing what was expected of me even when I was breaking the commandments behind their backs. I was reading the bible even when I couldn’t understand a complete sentence from it. I knew that by doing so I was making several of my family members proud, and even better, I’d feel accepted.
However, there’s something that many parents and other family members forget, which is while we are growing we also start realizing that we have the power to make our own choices.
I wholeheartedly believe that knowledge is power, but it’s what we do with that knowledge that essentially forms our character. While we may learn about the history of other countries, or learn about other cultures through our peers, none of that will have an impact on us if we don’t accept that knowledge with an open mind and an open heart. If we are stuck to our own beliefs, how are we to learn to love others for who they are?
As I grew older I started feeling a disconnection to the beliefs that were passed on to me as a child. One of the things that was taught to me is that if I ever started feeling that way it was because the devil was trying to steal me from my salvation. As ridiculous as so many of the these things sound to me today, it took me a while to actually question that truth of it. But as I opened myself up to the different dimensions of life, with time I began questioning the validity to a lot of the things that were preached, and questioning an ambiguous book written by an unknown author.
I started to realize that the book that was being used to preach by so many was up to perception anyway. I noticed the insincere behavior people would pass on in church, the fact that these people were pretentious enough to believe that their lifestyle was the only one worthy of salvation. I noticed the competition or standards set among other religious organizations through the one I belonged to. I also noticed the double standards set in religious practices, how these people were so judgmental, and their overall political incorrectness.
Despite that I realized something, and it was that if I was feeling this disconnection it must have been for a reason. As I’ve grown older I’ve learned that our gut instincts should never be discredited. I learned that there is more to life than the one way that was taught to me.
I started questioning my beliefs, and as a result I started questioning everything around me. I wanted to live a genuine life, and in order to make that happen I needed to get exposed to every lifestyle other than that one I was brought up in. Knowledge was the key to an alternative life.
We’ve learned through personal experiences, or through media news outlets, how religion has been the cause for a lot of trouble. It has led to several extremist groups and behaviors. How these groups have protested outside of wedding ceremonies, or have been at fault for terrorist attacks. We have seen murders take place or wars breaking out through the divide of beliefs. Yet we have also seen recovering drug addicts find help through religious organizations, the success of charity benefits through the help of churches, or people finding peace after the loss of a loved one through their religious practices.
Faith might not always move mountains; sometimes it might even destroy them. I am no one to get in the way of someone’s religious practices, but if you are someone with strong religious beliefs know that your faith should not be the cause of hate. Instead expose yourself to different ideas before settling into one ideal belief. I have learned that the world doesn’t revolve around a particular faith, but we can definitely help make it revolve smoother if we learn to accept others despite our own views.
