The Power of Religion
By Emily, age 20, Newfoundland
Sweet Designs Featured Writer
In propaganda, there's always a good guy and a bad guy. The enemy and the hero. Everything is always black and white, so we grow up thinking that people on the other side are the bad guys we are supposed to be afraid of. But real life is just several shades of gray. As a political science student and a citizen of the world, I've learned that there are three sides to every story. There's a story from each side, and then there's the truth.
I happen to come from a diverse family. I have a mother who's a Mormon, whose entire family is Baptist, and my father and his entire family practice Islam. Both sides of my family hate each other because they think that the other's religion is wrong and their views are backwards. My aunt Ann* once told me that Christianity was the only right religion because they believe in Jesus Christ, but that anybody could be saved from hell if they accepted Jesus Christ as the son of God. My dad's family, however, believes that Jesus was simply a prophet and nothing else, just like Mohamed.
Something I can't quite understand, though, is that the Bible and the Koran derive from the same book. Both religions believe in God, both religions believe that you should "love thy neighbour", and that killing is a sin. So why is killing in the name of God okay?
When the Islamic extremists declared Jihad upon the infidels of America, the right wing Bush Administration started their War on Terror in Afghanistan and the unnecessary war in Iraq.
Being agnostic, I suppose that's why I don't really understand why things are the way they are. I find them both to be silly and hypocritical in their own way. Either way, I've come to realize that as long as there is religion, there will always be controversy and war associated with both sides. All I know is that the power of religion is pretty fierce, and while it does some people a lot of good, like most other things, it can make people do crazy stuff.
* Name has been changed
