Religion is the most primal and personal form of expression a person can experience. It can bring peace, love and purpose to your life. And, the hope and faith that you receive from a higher power of your own understanding can get you through the most difficult of times.

I have spent most of my life trying to understand why the world is the way it is. Wars, drugs, crime, and discrimination seem to drown the beauty of the world. But, I believe the ugliness has a lot with people’s attitudes.

It seems to me that far too many people don’t care about other people. The world is full of evil, and religion is twisted by a sick few to excuse their own selfish desires. They kill in the name of religion, they discriminate in the name of religion, and they think they are somehow better than other people because they go to church? This is not what religion is supposed to be about. Church does not absolve you of sin.

To me religion is about the search for inner peace. I view God and the Devil as the ultimate battle of good versus evil. And based on these beliefs, I strive to live my life so that it reflects the best of me. I try to be unselfish (though I don’t always succeed), I try to treat others with kindness, and I truly believe that at the end of this long hard struggle called life that there will be a place in Heaven waiting for me.

Now, I’ll be honest that wasn’t always the case. There was a time when I thought religion was a waste of time. I thought it was all a lie. After all, why did bad things happen to good people?

I rebelled against everything that my parents taught me, but deep down it was still there. I just had to search for my own understanding. I needed time to mature and see the world without faith. It used to drive me crazy when my mother said she was praying for me, but deep down I was glad she did.

I discovered through my own personal journey that religion isn’t about what your parents believe, or what other people believe, it’s about what is meaningful to you. When the hardest times of my life rolled around and I found myself at my darkest hour, I knew there had to be more. People live and people die, and it is what they do in between that really matters. We are all a part of each other.

Ultimately, the basic belief in almost every religion is that of living your life the best way possible. Love your neighbor as yourself, do not kill, honor your parents, tell the truth, give to those less fortunate, and generally be a good person. So, what’s wrong with that? There is nothing wrong as far as I can see.

In my experience, people who judge others will eventually be judged themselves. You can’t spend your life trying to convert everyone to your way of thinking. They will only resist. And, you should never discount their faith just because you’ve never experienced it. True faith cannot be forced; it is felt from deep within the soul.

I don’t understand the why’s and where fore’s of everything in life but each day I make a decision to believe in myself and to believe in a power greater than myself. I believe this power helps guide me further ahead, and to make the right choices in life. You might call it your conscience, but I call it God. I know God is always beside me, and I am never truly alone.

I believe individuals must search for their own belief through self-discovery. As for me, I think of the saying, “I’d rather believe and die to discover there was no God, than to die disbelieving only to find out that there was.”