When College Ruins Your Religious Faith

2008-06-02T23:04:00.001-07:00

College provides a valuable opportunity for young people to expand their horizons past their immediate experiences and challenge their own belief systems. However, as students grow and mature their worldview, they may find that their newfound outlook on life comes in conflict with what they have been taught their whole life prior to that. This is especially true with religious views and college students. I myself have found it difficult to reconcile my growing doubts about Catholicism and the strong belief in that same religion by my family and friends around me. This has lead me to live my life constantly questioning my beliefs, going back to them, and questioning them again.

I grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood in Philadelphia, and everyone I knew growing up was also Catholic. Needless to say, I never had much exposure to anything other than Christian values and beliefs, and I assumed that, for the most part, everyone else believed the same thing. As one might expect, this assumption proved to be very false the second I got to college. I was exposed to many different people with different backgrounds and belief systems, and with this I was exposed to these different belief systems themselves. And while this exposure was a great experience, opening my eyes to other points of view and expanding my worldview, it also forced me to deal with a tough realization: it is very possible that my religious beliefs and ideas are not accurate.

At this point I had to start examining my belief system and its merits. For the most part, Catholicism is a terrific belief system, and it has served me well thus far. It is the basis for my whole view on life and the way I act towards others, which I feel is quite decent. Therefore I cannot wholly dismiss Catholic teachings because I have some doubts. I do, however, have many issues with the doctrinal teachings of Catholicism, and Christianity in general. Basically, while I feel the philosophy of Christianity is a good one and a valuable one, the religious, supernatural teachings sometimes give me pause.

These doubts are most apparent when I consider the afterlife, or the lack thereof. I have been raised to believe in heaven and hell; that good people go to heaven and evil people go to hell. That belief served me well for many years, and comforted me by assuring that if I lived a good life I would be rewarded in the afterlife. It is much more reassuring to believe that you go to heaven when you die than to believe that your life merely ends and you cease to exist. But, the more I learned and the more I considered the possibility of life continuing on after physical death, the less it seemed possible. This was the first Christian teaching I really took issue with, mainly because when I thought about what would happen when I die, I became terrified and realized I did not believe in the happy ending in heaven as much as I thought I did. After this belief was shattered, it was easy to question others.

These doubts in and of themselves are not necessarily a bad thing. They become a bad thing when they start to cause conflict with my interaction with the world around me. As I stated above, I come from an Irish Catholic neighborhood, and, accordingly, my family is very religious. In many respects, my family is even more religious than most families in our neighborhood. My uncle in a Monsignor for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and was always the favorite son of my grandmother. My great aunt, who lived with my grandmother, spent most of my childhood trying to convince any of my cousins to join the priesthood. Holiday celebrations revolved around the mass that preceded the celebrations, and attending mass every Sunday was a must. So when I start to question my Catholic beliefs, this puts me at odds with a whole family full of believers.

This is where the real conflict occurs. How do I deal with these doubts that tell me everyone in my family is wrong about what they believe? If I decide that I don’t believe in Catholic teaching anymore, I am in essence saying that my entire family has been basing their lives on false beliefs. My uncle has devoted his whole life to teaching and spreading the word of Jesus, who am I to tell him he is wasting his time? There is no easy way to walk away from a belief system that has shaped your entire life and the lives of those around you. What then can I do?

I have been asking myself this for a while now and have come to a reasonable solution. I still have my doubts, but I have decided that the life that the Catholic faith has helped me form is one worth living, doubts and all. After all, isn’t that what faith is all about? Just about every faith has basic teachings that contradict science or logic, but they provide the basis for living a good life as a productive member of society. Many of the things the Catholic Church teaches may not have happened, but that is not the important part of the story. The important part of the story is the meaning it gives us and our lives, not the factuality of the events it contains. Therefore, it would be foolish of me to throw away the faith that led me to live a good and meaningful life because some of the things it teaches are not historically or scientifically accurate. I have gone past the historical to the philosophical, and that has given me an acceptable level of peace with my religious views.

Now, I still attend mass just about every Sunday, and listen to the Scripture readings and the priest’s sermons. It gives me a chance to reflect on my life and my relationship with God, whether or not it is a good life or good relationship at the time. I still live with doubts, but find comfort in the fact that we all do, and will continue to for the rest of our lives. I can see past the doubts to see the true value of the teachings I have been hearing all my life. They give my life direction and guidance, and everyone needs that at times.

Lucid Thought

When College Ruins Your Religious Faith