Culture is a culmination of socialization, perception, and free will. We are socialized by the many culture groups that we belong to and forms our patterns of thinking. Even with constant socialization from birth through adulthood, our free will creates a unique personalities. One step out of our majority culture towards re-examining why we hold the beliefs we do can cause a slow cascading effect in our perception of the world and in turn how we interact with it.
I chose to focus on the culture group of religion, specifically Christianity. The reason why I chose to research this religion is that it wields a great deal of power throughout mankind's history, our current socialization, and our personal cultures. My skepticism and analytical mind finds it very difficult to comprehend faith and the Christian faith is the driving force behind their beliefs. Personally, I find myself annoyed by their “blind” faith. Ironically, I harbor a jealousy in the comfort they take in their faith. Christians perspective of other people, life choices, other religions, human behavior and the afterlife changes how they interact with other people in their daily lives. This is going to be a very difficult topic for me to comprehend and that is why I chose to focus my efforts on religion.
Is my analytical thinking the source of my lack of faith? Is there a way to have the power of faith harnessed to a non religious person who is spiritual? I hope to answer these questions for my own benefit as well.
Works Cited
Coexist Photograph, retrieved from http://chirho.jasonkpowers.com/?p=84 February 8th 2013.
Faith Test Photograph, retrieved from http://blog.fhfbc.org/2011/10/faith-test-trials.html February 8th 2013.
I will be very interested in following your project. I too am deeply skeptical about religions, and I can't bring myself to believe in it. I completely understand your comment about jealousy. Everyone says to "have faith", but it just isn't as easy as that for me. I think this a great topic for you!
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