Religion (Or Lack There Of)

I’m sure you’ve all seen the South Park Episode where the hippies take over…
 http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103815/

In a way, I believe that I had a very similar experience in Art School, but rather with religion. Everyone was extreme left-wing liberals… self-proclaimed revolutionaries in their own individualisms and awkward outfits who detest any sort of presence of a higher being. I don’t want it to seem like my college years were negative but I do feel like I “lost my religion”…to put it in the great words of REM… to my peers.

Today, Zachary will be taking his qualifications exam to become an official PhD candidate in the Chemical Engineering Department at Stanford University. I’m really excited for him!! This is probably one of the biggest days of his life! If this had taken place before I went to college, I would most likely pray for him. I’d pray for God to give my husband the strength and confidence to get through his presentation and for his worries to all be put to rest… but now I find that I am in a very different place in my life. I don’t attend church and very rarely did I attend at MICA. Even though I can sit here and write out what I would pray… it all seems so empty to me and even scripted because I no longer have that connection with God and my Catholic roots. Now that I am out of school, and out of the hostile, anti-religious mentality of art school… I find myself wondering if I could ever get that back. It took 12 years of my life to get to the level of faith I had when I entered my freshman year of college. It just baffles me that all that could be taken down in a mere 4 years.

Naturally, the answer to this problem is to just start attending church again, right? I don’t think it’s that simple at all. I’m skeptical now. I don’t know what I believe anymore and I don’t want to force myself into anything either. There is nothing worse than being pressured into anything! It has come to a point where I view organized religion as a guilt trip or a way to take money from me. That may sound selfish, but it’s true. The rare times that I went to church while visiting home on breaks during school, I felt like I would basically go to Hell if I did not give something to the church (because they were going BANKRUPT). I love how when collection rates are up, diocese are praised. Last time I checked, that was not the main purpose of organized religion… but sadly it has become a focal point as of late.


I think the last time I did confession was the first time to get my sacrament. In fact, I’m 100% positive about that.

The real root of the matter… besides having no connection towards religion… is that Zachary and I will be raising children soon. We have to make a commitment of sorts so that the kids won’t get confused! Right now I’d say that Zachary and I are equally non-religious. It may be because we have been living together for a while now that we are kind of on the same “spiritual level” and take on each other’s ideals. I feel like we need to provide a religious background simply to offer an additional stable constant. Read theses interesting studies on the affects of religion and academic performance:

University Of Texas
Sherkat

Maybe our child should just be Jewish. Case solved.

Great article about picking a religion for your children:
Preconception