What I See and What You See

In this modern world, some people might think that religion is old, not relevant anymore, or even not worthy to follow. Somehow, because of a group of people, religion was labeled with persecution, harassment, or even with no human rights and peace. Despite all those things that sometimes make our general conclusion goes through one thing ‘religion is not important anymore’. We do find that for so many people religion –no matter how hard it is to understand- is still considered important. This is somehow contradicted, and this leads to several groups of people on how they see religions.

There are some people that still follow a certain religion or believing in God but not completely doing the rituals or stuff, they just do things that make sense to them. The other group is the one that still fully believes and does all the rituals instructed by the religion. Then, the rest, who are not believing on God or religion anymore and they are not doing rituals and stuff. Meanwhile, faith means believing in something you cannot know for sure it is real, and many people struggling with that.

For me personally, there were times that I thought about God and questioning our existence. Back in the day, when I was in middle school, I have some friends that have the same thought and started questioning a lot of things about God, religion, faith, or even the true purpose of our life. One of them stop believing on God and religion, not doing the rituals, or praying. This friend of mine, once questioning my faith and wonder why I personally believe on that religion, is it just because I was born to this family or what. At that time, I answer it with my perspective, some reason that then brings me on the point that I believe on what I follow, and I am grateful for it.

However, perspective is the way an individual sees the world, it comes from their personal point of view. It shaped by life experienced, knowledge, values, their assumptions, their current state of mind, and other things. Just like my perspective about religion shaped by what I know, what my mother teaches me, and the environment I lived in. Besides, I enrich my views by reading and learning, and yes, the reality might be different from religion or the values that brought by religion might not relevant sometimes because of the different era and needed.

I once said to this friend ‘what others see and how their faith is not something I should wonder, he or she needs to figure it out by themselves’. You are the one that can choose and think if religion is an important aspect of your life or not. The odds things to believe on God and religion are quite a lot if you ask me. Out of more than seven billion people on this planet and you are here with me and becoming my friend is one of them. I was born to a perfect mother for me, what are the odds of that.

I once watched a movie, one of the characters said, ‘ did you know that if gravity were slightly more powerful the universe would collapse into a ball, also if gravity were slightly less powerful the universe would fly apart, there would be no stars or planets. It is just the gravity is precisely as strong as it needs to be and if the ratio of the electromagnetic force to the strong force was not 1% life would not exist, what are the odds, that would happen all by itself? and the precision of the universe at least makes it logical to conclude there is a creator.’ This is one of the best logical points of view that I love to share if others once ask me.

We often see something coincident and we conclude that things not relevant anymore when we feel that we sure about it, but we forgot to see the other's reason and views. Our lack of understanding sometimes makes us think we know, in fact, we did not. What you see might be different from others, yet for some people and in some aspects, religion is important. By having faith, it raises awareness and morality, brings peace and it is wonderful. Some might see that religion are bad because they experienced or saw a group of people with the name of certain religion doing bad and hurt others.

But, this is the reality, not even a single religion teaches us to do bad things or hurt others, it is been always us, human, the one that destroyed the value of religions and the one that closed our eyes by labeled the religion with bad things that human do. There are people who think that they are powerful, so they dominated and change the religious value based on their needed. The others think that only their faith is right and end up discriminated others. This is not something we wanted, but by respect others, what they believe, their differences, and value their identity, we hope our society that full of diversity will last longer.