Alright. So this time, the revelation is about religion. I mean, it's something we see everyday of our lives, is it not? Even if you don't believe in a God, or even the plural, we see those people who stand there on the streets, talking about the 'end of the world, save yourself now' and all of that. But really what does it all mean?
Well how this revelation goes is that I recently watched a movie called 'Saving Sarah Cain'. It's about a big-city news columnist who goes to the funeral of her Amish sister and becomes the legal guardian of her 5 nephews and nieces. And as I was watching, it occurred to me that the children seemed to really into their Amish religion. I mean, originally, the sister wasn't Amish, but she met a guy who was I'm guessing, and she obviously moved and changed her religion to be with him. But just like my revelation about love, what if she hadn't met him, hadn't married him and therefore she hadn't moved to the Amish community, her children then, what religion would they be following then?
Following this train of thought, does this mean that our religion is pretty much set by what our parents believe in? Because from birth, we would be exposed to that religion, their views, their beliefs, and we wouldn't know much about other religions. Meaning that from a very young age, these values are imprinted into us. So would this mean that our religion, the things that we belief in, they are defined by our parents?
Of course, a lot of people change as they grow and mature, and many even decide that the religion that they were brought up to believe in does not suit them and change religions. They might even forget about religion altogether and decide not to live with such beliefs. But then again, those who do grow up still believing in what they parents brought them up to believe in, their values are still defined by what their parents have taught them.
Now to add another layer of complexity, how about their religion being defined by where they live? Like for example, in Asian countries, the religions there are generally Buddhism, Taoism, and so on. Then in Europe, those religions tended to be Lutheran, Christianity, though this was later on, and so on and so forth. Does this mean that our beliefs and values are once again also defined by an external factor?
Taking into consideration everything I've written so far, even though our religion is supposed to simply be a reflection of your own beliefs and belong to you and your God/Gods, if there are these external factors to affect what you know, then how is the religion still 'yours'?
