The imposition of a new community brought forth my “true” feelings and beliefs. I was born and brought up in the Catholic community. My parents taught me strong morals and put me into all the religious classes held at whatever church we attended at the time. As I grew older I was finally beginning to realize what I truly believed in but it was still not clear. I was still searching for who I was and how I felt about my Religion. In going to Azusa Pacific University and the imposition of this new community my answers quickly came.
I was baptized as a baby and made my First Communion in second grade. The “First Communion” represents the ability to start receiving the body and blood of Christ at our masses. Even though I d I did not need to attend these classes between the years of third grade and high school my parents kept me in them. Freshman year in high school, I started on the three year trip to make my Confirmation, or initiation into the Church. Through these three years I had to attend classes every Sunday and retreats once a year. The retreats were what really affected me the most. Our class would be up in the mountains for 2 to 3 days doing various workshops and prayer sessions. At the end of the retreat we would always make our confession with our Priest who would come up.
Confession taught me much about what I could do to fulfill my spirituality. When I made my confession it felt as if my sins were suddenly just eaten out of my body by some unknown force. Something about confessing yours sins and asking questions to the Priest made me feel so much better. In my final year of conformation I finally “got the guts” to make my confession face to face with my Priest, Father Mark. Making my confession face to face with Father Mark was something more inspiring to me then learning something I have always wanted to learn. His eyes gazing into mine made me feel like Jesus himself was using my Priests eyes and mouth to console me and answer the questions I needed to know.
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My Church was named Holy Innocents, after the endless number of abortions committed worldwide. Even as this was the name of our Church I had disagreements with what they believed. Catholics in general believe that abortion is wrong and is a sin. I believe it is a sin but I also believe that if it is best for the mother as well as the child most importantly, an abortion may be good in a sense. If you know that the life of this child is going to be miserable, you’re not going to be able to support the child, or something that would make this child’s upbringing not be good, then I firmly believe it is right that that child does not experience any of these hardships.
Another view that the general Catholic has is that if you don’t pray, and you don’t attend church every Sunday, then you are a bad Catholic. I view it as if you truly believe in the Catholic faith and what it stands for then you don’t need to prove yourself. Yes I believe praying is important, but if you miss a prayer before a meal I don’t believe you should be condemned for it. If you truly have strong faith in whatever religious beliefs you may have then you are a good [religion]. I don’t feel like you have to prove yourself to tell others that you are a good Catholic, if I believe in what my religion stands for than I am a good Catholic.
Because of my faith in God, I preferred going to a private college over a regular college. Not because most are much smaller in population but that I would be around people who felt and believed similar to what I felt and believed. I got accepted to Whittier College and Azusa Pacific University. In making my choice I based it on who had the better choice of classes in the department I wanted to study, Business. I had found out that Azusa had a very good business department and that Whittier had the classes I would need, but did not have a department devoted to it.
I had no idea what Azusa Pacific was going to be like. The people at this school amazed me; I had never been around such friendly and lively people. It was like I was in some other world. I am not very social so as that being that I really don’t know too many people here. Attending Chapel was what first struck me as imposing to my beliefs. I mean no disrespect to Chris Brown as a pastor, I think he is great, but the things he was preaching were clashing against me. The Christian belief that you must love God in front of everything in your life really appalled me.
I am not saying that Catholics do not love God with a passion, but Catholics don’t seem to express their love for him in that manner. I remember Chris Brown talking about how him personally must love God more that his own wife, more than even his kids. I truly believe that I cannot love God more that anything in my life. When I get married, I am not going to love God more than my own wife. I will still have my love for him, but to me other things seem more important. My wife, kids, family, would all come before God in my life, and as that may seem disgraceful, that is what I believe.
The biggest thing that made me say “hold on” was my Foundation of Ministry Teacher giving a lecture. It seems as if he always lecturing about how to be a good Christian. Maybe I am just having these confrontations because I am a Catholic and all the Christians in my class believe and live as he says fit to in his lectures. My teacher was talking one day on how everything that you do in life has to be done in order to please God. Everything, everything that you do in you life, has to be done for the liking of God. I believe that someone does something because they themselves want to or somebody else wants them to.
In everything I do in life, I do because I personally want to or because someone else wants to me to. I am going to college because I want a better education, I want to go somewhere in life, not because I want to please God. I don’t mean to sound self-centered, but if you don’t accomplish things in your life for yourself, then you are not going to be a happy person, and being a happy person will make your life miserable. And to say that if you do not do everything in your life to please God makes you a bad Christian makes me think that you’re not living a life. You are not living a life that God gave generously to you to accomplish endless things. God gave you life to let you free in doing what would make you happy. God loves to see his creations happy, and what makes people happy is doing what they want to do because by doing what they want to do makes them a happy individual.
In conclusion, I would like to say that even though it may seem that I am bias towards Christian beliefs, I am not. My beliefs and views on things just differ and it may be a result of how I was raised but it is what I truly believe. This imposition of a new community really brought forward my “true” beliefs and I am grateful for it. I am not going to exclude myself from this new community but embrace it because it has done more for my faith than I ever could have imagined.
