Tags
agnostic, Christianity, education, faith, God, Inspirational, philosophy, Religion, Spirituality & Religion, success
Being born in an Asian family, my parents had high expectations of me. Except, maybe sugar coated with ‘western’ teachings. To get good grades was a given and if I didn’t, tutoring was where they would send me. Now don’t get me wrong, unlike typical Asian parents they didn’t directly force me to get good grades, but obviously told me I had to try my best, and if I didn’t get all A’s, they would think that I hadn’t tried hard enough, and then tell me to try harder (and if I still didn’t that was when their true Asian expectations kicked in) (which basically means that nothing was different). They also told me that I could be anything I wanted. Turns out, although they never explicitly stated it, they pretty much brought me up with the choice between jobs to do with law, medicine, politics, architecture or accountant as my profession. Now you may ask, how does this relate to religion and true success? It does. I’ve always wondered, what is the point of doing all these things anyways when you die eventually? I don’t know. Me being in my ripe teenage years, I really do not want to waste away the rest of my life doing the same thing everyday without really finding any meaning or joy in them. Well of course, doctors save lives, and being the president of the united states will have a huge impact on other people’s lives, but on the day I die, I am almost certain that all of it will be meaningless to me.
So this is where religion comes in. Religion will replace this “meaningless” with the promise of achievement and reward. That is why I go to church, to learn more about this. Religion brings meaning to people’s lives, that is why even if there is only faith to back it up, millions still believe. It is a powerful motive, and also a powerful reason to live. I know some atheists will completely disagree with me, and also think those who believe in religion are weak, but as long as it brings believers meaning to their life, by making them believe that they are living a successful life, it is a great thing. Whether or not I embrace religion in my life will be decided naturally as the years go by, but for now… I’ll need to focus on my school exams, ha.
Thoughts 
I’m not bashing religion, I love all religions! But I’m going to push a little bit (not to troll, but help create a constructive dialogue.)
Define “True Success.”
And many would argue that people like to embrace the delusion of achievement and reward simply to tell themselves that their hard work in life is leading up to somewhere. What is your response to that?
To be honest, I’m more of an agnostic, and still learning about how religion works and which religion is the ‘right’ path to follow (perhaps none are). But what I mean is nobody can, or will find the universal meaning of life. All we know is that every person in the world will inevitably die. Death will ultimately make everything you have done meaningless to you as you will no longer feel anything and just decay, only having your particles and atoms recycled by nature again. Religion removes this meaninglessness and is a medium for people to believe that they have achieved true success with the promise of reward in the afterlife (at least from most major religions). It is also a scale for people to measure how successful they have been in their lives. That is mainly my point. It doesn’t matter if your hard work is ever rewarded at all and it doesn’t matter if people embrace the delusion of success because as long as they use their own scale to measure their own success, nobody can really deny that they have succeeded in their own mind. I’m not trying to take any sides here, but I just think that it is certainly more difficult for an atheist to find meaning or success in their life for subconsciously they will be aware that no matter what they do in their life they will inevitably die, and that after death there will be nothing, meaning the scale used to measure their success will be much more difficult to find or create.
That may be what religion is for, but faith takes you by the hand and leads you to true peace and contentment in life– I’ll take the peace and contentment over the success because I had success and it didn’t automatically come with peace… I wish you the best on your journey!