Religion and Me

by Gloria

I’ve never really understood religion, beliefs, or the power of faith, but I’ve heard about it many times. I have some friends that are Christian and are wholesome, goody-goody, never swear, homophobic — but some of my other Christian friends don’t act like that at all. They just go to church and say that they're Christian, but you would never know. I recently found out that one of my friends was Buddhist and my reaction was “What????” I was completely surprised; I didn’t think she was religious at all.

When my mom made me go to her church every Sunday for the summer, I had to join the teen worship group thing downstairs where there was a band and everybody would sing songs about loving Jesus and songs about God. I didn’t really want to be there, and I don’t have a great singing voice either so I watched everybody stand up, smiling, and sing, as I stood there quietly waiting for it to end.

What is faith? What makes people believe in something they’ve never seen and don't know for sure that it even exists? I’d been to Sunday school a few times when I was in kindergarten to 2nd grade, and I don’t remember ever learning much about God. I have scattered memories of praying at night for materialistic things and hoping that God would grant my wishes. I realize from my brief church experience that this isn’t what religon is; it’s something deeper that I don’t understand. If I had been born into a religion like many others, things would definitely be different. Personally I don’t believe in any religion, because it would hard for me to believe in something that I don’t know even exists. For me, it’s not realistic and able to be felt/heard/touched/seen in the physical world. Believing in something blindly like that is something too much to ask for from me.

Maybe that’s what faith is -- believing in something so strongly that you would stake your life on it, and never doubt it. This is something you’d have to experience to know about, something that can’t be defined simply by someone who is a stranger to it, something so strong it can change people forever. I’ve seen it happen.