Religion.

[heresybythought]

There's been a lot swimming around in my head lately religion-wise.  I'm having difficulty coming to grips with being in a religious community.  Communities are filled with people and I don't like very many people.  I suppose it doesn't help that the religious community of which I'm ostensibly a member this summer is particularly privileged and

Comments

[g4bz0r]

It's easy to take a thing for granted if you grow up with it, and I guess religion is no exception. And when you grow up with a faith, it's easy to just assume you know everything you need to know.

And, though this isn't likely to apply to as many people, the version of Christianity I was taught was very lax, and I was free to discard dogma that didn't make sense to me; there wasn't really an incentive to learn about my faith, because my faith started to be a figment of my own imagination pretty early on.

When I was no longer "moved" by my religion, I decided I was agnostic. A lot of people apparently don't need their religion to concern them in order to call themselves members.

[lne_bird]

I definitely agree with the privelege of being born into faith thing. I've had some long conversations with my brother (who was going to be a Catholic priest and goes to mass EVERY DAY and treats clinical depression by telling the depressed person that "Jesus was lonlier than you will ever be, so suck it up", and he actually agrees--though from a "new Catholics go to mass more" sort of way. It's the difference between choosing to believe and assuming belief, because when you choose to believe, you look into the religion more; you want to know what it's about so you make a point of learning the rules. If you assume religion, it has always been a part of you, so you know it like the back of your hand, in that everyone says that they know the back of their hands really well, but how many people study them to look at all the hairs and see what's there? (or maybe I'm just a freak who doesn't know anything about my hands, and everyone else does, I don't know). Well. These are my opinions, at least.

[g4bz0r]

That phrase always bugged me. I never study the back of my hand, and it's not really that complex, as body parts go. I always think of Scotty saying "I know this ship like the back of my hand" and then knocking himself out on an overhead support beam in Star Trek V.

[isychos_kore]

I think that a lot of people raised to be religious will have a crisis of faith at some point, or at least a few moments that will make them question their beliefs at some point. But I think you're right that they are less likely to turn to theology for reassurance. They might read scripture or talk to a clergyperson, but I have trouble imagining your run-of-the-mill Presbyterian grabbing some John Calvin, for example, and reading it to reconfirm their faith in Christianity or just to educate themselves. Your own attitude towards religion includes a lot of intellectual curiosity, which make sense because that's the kind of person that you are. However, most Christians are not religion majors, and I'd daresay that most Americans don't have much interest in scholarship period, which can be frustrating.

Still, even if their religion does not concern them, or move them, or make them want to learn, I don't think that it's completely pointless. In hard times, it can provide a great deal of comfort.

[cheeksthellama]

*cough religion is silly cough*

A great great great book, and one of my personal favorite novels ever, is The Bridge of San Luis Ray which I suppose is mostly about the difference between random chance and the divine plan, but it is all about simple people and their relationship and how it develops with religion.