Personal Expression: a Mixture of Everything

Personal Expression: a Mixture of Everything

In today’s world there are many different religions, Christian, Islam, Buddhism, Native American, and many more. Yet even among these broad categories, each has it’s own internal division. I will mostly be focusing on the Christian religion to show the points of this topic. In the Christian religion there are many different sects of belief. For example, Catholicism, Mormonism, Lutheranism, Baptist, ect. In my life I have been two of these.
I was born and raised as a Catholic. During my high school years I began questioning my faith and what I truly believed in. I did not feel as comfortable in the Catholic Church as I had when I was a child. I began searching for a church in which I felt my beliefs were most in line with. After a couple years, I came in contact with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), better known as the Mormons. I was skeptical at first but after going for over a year, I decided that I felt the most comfortable at the LDS church, and that my own personal beliefs where, for the most part, in line with what the church was teaching. I converted to the LDS church and things were great, until I got to college.
Now I do not know what it is about college, but it changes people, some for the better and some for the worse. I cannot yet say as to if my change was good or bad. I have found that my personal beliefs about things have changed. Some would say that this is bad and that it is against God’s wishes for us. I know a lot of the things I have done have not made me the proudest person in the world; however, I also feel that I am not any worse of a person because of it. At this point I am beginning to contemplate as to whether the LDS church is in fact the best church for me.
I have been thinking a great deal about my life and how my religion is reflected through it. The longer I look, the more I discover that a person’s religion really has no bearing on his or her life. I have been finding that for many people they are part of a particular religion because that is how they were raised or it is where they feel the most comfortable. Yet when you ask them if they believe everything that the religion teaches, most will say, “well most of it, not all but the majority of it.” It seems that people tend to pick and choose what they believe, even though they call themselves, Catholics, Mormons, Baptists, Lutherans, Protestants. A person’s religion is nothing more than a way to categorize themselves.
This can also be seen in the movie, “Smoke Signals.” In the movie Victor and Thomas experience many different things. They are Native Americans, yet they are influenced greatly by the “white” world. This goes along with the, you pick and choose your beliefs. During parts of the movie, Victor and Thomas try their best to act Indian, while during other parts, you can definitely see the influences of life outside of the reservation.
No matter how little of an outside influence there might be, it is still there. Rarely does a person have beliefs that are strictly from one religion or from one group. We humans do in fact pick and choose everything to best fit ourselves, whether it is beliefs or teachings from different religions, or if it is our life style and our society.
This brings in another point about people expressing themselves through beliefs. The society a person lives in is a great example of this. In our own nation of the United States, we have such a diverse culture that our society varies from one area to another. For example, people from California believe that things should be run differently than the people in Montana think it should. We have liberals and conservatives, the Democrats and Republicans, members of these groups will agree on some of the basic things in our nation, yet they disagree so much. People in the U.S. pick which laws they like, and if they don’t like it, they try to change it. Some will try to get rid of the law and some will simply manipulate it. Yet, not matter what they are doing to the laws, they are still picking and choosing what they want to follow and believe. Many people believe that abortion is perfectly fine, but the death penalty is cruel and unjust. They are picking what they want to believe. These people are not seeing that both are killing another, but they are simply choosing what they want to believe.
No matter what religion or political party a person identifies himself or herself with; it is easy to see that normally people do not get their beliefs solely from one place. Rather in the case of both religion and politics, people will pick and choose the things they want to believe and follow. They will select a title, Democrat, Republican, Mormon, Catholic, whatever it may be. This title may not be exactly what they are. It is simply the closest category for who they are.