Challenging One's Faith by Laura

Challenging One's Faith by Laura - October 2013 Scholarship Essay

At some point in every person’s life one starts to question, why? Although this question seems terribly open ended and unspecific, it is the simplest way to explain the fundamental concept of everyone’s inquiry: Why am I here? What is the meaning of it all? As a child I was very self-righteous, and when I was old enough to ponder these questions on my own I believed vehemently in my own philosophy of the world. I judged those who thought different than me and was not afraid to express my difference in opinion.
I had this one friend, a devout Christian who had a similar confidence to my own, only in his own beliefs. He had made remarks to another boy in school, a Mormon, about his religion and soon enough everyone at my table was having a heated philosophical debate, and I wasn't one to pass the opportunity up to proclaim my own personal beliefs. I did my best to learn from the other religions and take them into account but for some reason I was compelled to “enlighten” my friend to my beliefs because of details of his faith that I found preposterous.
This, in retrospect, is when I made an erroneous mistake. At this point I was no longer being open minded about this persons beliefs. His arguments had become insignificant to me because of a detail of his constitution that I believed preposterous. It seemed regularly that we would casually rehash controversy about our differing opinions, questioning each other and the rudiments of our conjecture. Yet never would we ever reach conclusion or come to an agreement because we were both firmly obstinate towards the other. Every conversation left me more agitated and I developed an insatiable hunger to win this disparagement. I allowed my pride to rest on the line of a debate yet in the long run we were both in a losing battle.
Eventually, and it took longer than I would like to admit, I realized that neither of us could ever win and how I had become a hypocrite. I proclaimed that it was wrong of him to enforce on me his own beliefs while simultaneously forcing my own upon him. What makes one man’s philosophy more credible than any others? Which book is the "right" one to live by? It became clear to me that it was not my place to tell another the morals they live by are false, because it is all up to perspective and interpretation. All the arguments had done in the end was cause hurt feelings and damage our friendship.
It has been a re-occurring theme in history that religion has induced altercations much more severe than my own; like The Last Crusades for example. A fabulous illustration of the evil man can do for the benefit of their religions, over minor discrepancies. But if you believe in equality than you must also believe in equality of religion, meaning no one doctrine is more righteous than another. What we should focus on instead is the commonalities between our beliefs. From this lesson I learned that we are all entitled to our own search for faith without the disruptions of others trying to force their opinions on you.