Are Your Beliefs Just Skin Deep?

Op/Ed | By Audrey Tan —

We are a product of little moments, habits and intakes of organized and disorganized thoughts, words and noises all added up. The result is a world of different beliefs and ideologies, the religious and nonreligious.

In large part, we end up believing in what we’ve been exposed to and what has been repeated in our minds growing up, voluntarily or involuntarily, about every and any subject matter. Because of this, we end up forming our own judgments based on third-person hearsay or negative experiences rather than searching and conducting due diligence on what we don’t fully know.

Take for example, the Christian religion. Society’s impression of Christianity is typically not a positive one and often associated with “hypocrisy.” Is this an issue of the religion or the people who follow it? A hypocrite is the very action that Christ condemned during his time on earth. Has Christianity along with its understandings and practices become so different, diluted or compromised to the point that if Jesus was here, he would not consider “followers” to be actual followers?

But the latter is not a question only Christians should be asking but every individual who claims a religious label, or any label at that—a Muslim, a Buddhist, a professor, a preacher, etc.

For those on the opposite side of the spectrum from the outside looking in, making conclusions based on what has been seen or heard are only surface level assumptions that need probing—looking into the foundation of the faith. And one place to start is through the original sacred text that each religion goes by.

Due diligence is seeking after the uncertain and unknown on your own instead of taking the easy way out and making quick assumptions or relying on indirect sources rather than the source itself.

In addition to looking into the original source for what we do not know, included in the unknown is what we cannot see with the naked eye or measure with mere observation or science. What we call telepathy, the sixth sense, and miracles all point to a spiritual realm, which is a religious matter. Just because we can’t explain or measure an occurrence, it doesn’t nullify the existence or relevancy of the experience.

Science alone cannot be the only basis for finding proof that God exists or not. The spiritual realm is beyond the physical and it cannot be measured with physical tools just like it wouldn’t make sense to measure the wind with a ruler, or the soul with a scale.

Religion plays an important role in our lives whether we believe in a higher being or not because we’re constantly surrounded by it. The majority of the world is religious. It penetrates into politics. It affects us consciously and subconsciously. The question is, how will we respond? We can either choose to be ignorant and judge quietly or obnoxiously and incorrectly without knowing the whole picture—or we can examine, search and go out of our way and all the way, to find truth. And that is certainly worth it.