This is an article written for the newsletter of my department (Sociology). It’s personal and social at the same time since it talks about my beliefs both as a Christian and a sociologist
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Believing in God has always been an intellectual experience for me.
For the longest time, I believed that my course and faith will never meet. Religion has always been a hot topic in Sociology, in which believers are ones to get burned first.
Belief in a sovereign being would classify one into the stereotype of people who have not outgrown their childhood socialization, or probably never have learned anything in class. Even though Christianity deviates itself from religion into a focus on relationship with God, a lot of people won’t even tell the difference.
Like most people, I used to hate anyone who believes in some sort of a higher being. Passing by churches admittedly left me feeling disgusted, especially at that time when the Catholic Church meddled with political affairs. I could feel my self-righteous fingers pointing at them as I shout “hypocrites!”
This has probably started since elementary, where studying in prestigious Catholic schools alienated a lot of students through memorization of prayers and requirements of attending mass — even though the lifestyle of our religious authorities were hilarious. Somehow the picture of God is enmeshed with the picture of the illness of society. Could God be just a social construct that is as messy as the society? Or does God exist as an objective reality?
Quite unusually given my hostility to anything “religious”, I became a Christian in college. I have often asked myself the reason why I accepted Christ, even to the point of doubting if belief in God was a mere influence from my peers. But to me it wasn’t. I did not doubt that my faith was a personal experience from a sociological God.
Last year, I wrote a research paper about how people are able to exercise their agency when they belong to a religious group. This was out of my effort to rethink how I stereotyped believers before (and to think that we generalize anyone who practices religion as “judgmental”) I know for a fact that nobody is hypnotized into committing into a whole set of beliefs that could probably stifle their so-called freedom. So what do believers think about believing?
The findings of the research put my previous prejudice in check. Instead of thinking that anyone who holds any belief in God is duped by a reified institution called religion, one should consider that an individual putting faith in a belief is a means of exercising agency. While believers may be influenced by their family, peers, educational or religious background, to personally believe in God is a choice altogether.
There are just a lot of things to discover about beliefs in God, Christian or otherwise, even though a lot of people may be allergic to religious matters. Being analytical or critical is also a test of faith that a believer should take.
Discussion