Faith/Religion when do we start believing?
What is faith? What is Religion? Why do we ask “What faith are you? or What religion are you?” and generally get the same answer. Is Faith and Religion interchangeable? At what point in life do we start believing in a faith/religion? Just some questions I often hear, not sure of a convincing argument or answer.
Faith
The assent off the mind to what is stated or put forward by another. Firm and earnest belief, spiritual apprehension, operative belief in the doctrines and moral principles forming a system of religion.
Religion
Belief in a superhuman being or beings, a personal god, controlling the universe and entitled to worship and obedience. The feelings, effects on conduct and the practices resulting from such belief. A system of faith doctrine and worship.
The above are dictionary definitions for both faith and religion. It would appear that they can be interchangeable, they both use the words to define the word e.g when defining faith “operative belief in the doctrines and moral principles forming a system of religion” and religion “ A system of faith doctrine and worship.” you need have a faith and belief to follow a religion.
Why follow a religious path?
It has been increasingly clear to me that as we grow older or when we have children, we tend to gravitate back to our faith. I say back, because it started when we were children and probably didn’t really understand too much about religion and were expected to have faith in something we could not see or feel.
I believe we follow a religious path to give ourselves some kind of discipline, trust in a higher being to lead us in the right direction, to have higher moral standing and to live a full life with peace and love in our minds and hearts.
This faith and belief is passed down by our parents or in some cases we are born into the religion, nevertheless they are our point of influence. We then go through the teenage years where we start rebelling, ”I don’t want to go to church, mosque or temple, I find it boring, it’s a waste of time, I’d rather be with my mates playing football”. Our faith becomes less important, it starts to take a back seat to “being with friends, playing sports, going clubbing or partying” Why is this so?
The Experience
What did we learn about our religion or faith during our formative years? Why did we start to rebel? Did our parents and elders lose their ability to influence us? Were we searching to find ourselves? These are just a handful of questions I wanted to ask others to find out how it influenced their attitude to their faith, what is their view point now and how strong is their belief.
I shall try to answer these questions from my experience. I did not feel I had a good doctrine of my faith, frankly, I was not really interested, my parents tried hard to educate was but were on a loosing wicket, I did not see the need and was just going through the motions to please my parents. The way we (My brother and I) were taught about our religion was we got a religious teacher in house. Over the next 6 months it became clearer to the teacher that we were not interested at all, he tried to control us, but our spirit and enthusiasm for other things were overwhelming.
Although my parents practiced their religion, I was far removed, I had internal conflicts, did my religion allow me to get ahead in this society? Would I be alienated by the people around me as I was of a different creed and race? these were questions I would ask myself. I started to question myself and actually found an answer from an unlikely source, a group of people from the community I aptly named “The God Squad”
The God Squad
The god squad were a bunch of people who read everyone the riot act without looking in their own back yard. They were very moralistic, they would intimate that so and so from the community are sinners and that they would rot in hell.
I realised I not and did not want to be like them, even though they had their faith they were so empty, all they did was gossip in the name of god, I found them to be hypocritical. Had they not been hypocrites and explained the essence of the religion/faith then I probably would have followed that path to help me grow. I would have practiced my religion for the greater of human kind.
Chosen Path
So from that day onward, I chose not to follow the religious path completely, I would take the best bits from different religions, I would read books, making a comparison of the basic fundamentals of each religion, I would then conduct my life applying the different philosophies I read. Having made the choice, for a short while I started living life a little carelessly, I was falling into the peer pressure syndrome, I started to do things to fit in, a short while later I was constantly challenging myself by asking is this what I really want?
As I was got older, there was a shift to my way of thinking, I started to look inside me more, I was in that phase of being despondent of my surroundings and started to search for myself. I was on a journey, for I started my spiritual journey. My view is that I think that people have missed the point of religion, the spiritual side has been neglected. I am far more spiritual than religious, I am on the path of enlightenment, to complete my soul.
Influence
As we grow older our parents have less influence on us, we start to make decisions for ourselves, this is definitely the case when it comes to religion.
We see life from a different viewpoint, however, this goes full circle when we have children of our own. We do somehow show traits in ourselves we did not like in our parents.
This is my observation, as I do not have children but I have seen this in my siblings and friends who have children.
I still don’t know at what point we start believing, I think it’s in our DNA make up, all humans have a faith and wants to follow a spirit path, this is within us but lays dormant until the point we are ready to release and live a fulfilled life, after which we try to pass on to the next generation.
Suggested Reading
Tags: discipline, feelings, Health, hearts, obedience, peace, Success, teenage years, universe, Wealth