What If Religion Worked Like College? Picking Your Own Set of Beliefs

A cocktail of religions — you choose to create your own mix

I’ve always wondered about religion — how many of us are born into our religions, and how many of us truly choose our own?

Think about it. Think of that family you know where the parents are Hindus but the kids chose to be Muslims. Or the guy who decided to be a Protestant not following after his Catholic mom or his Muslim dad, while his twin sister decided to be a Buddhist.

The characters mentioned above are probably only a figment of my imagination — and don’t exist in any part of the world.

Where I come from, the huge country of India, also the second-most-populous in the world, religion is mostly something you’re born into. A majority of Hindus with a sizeable minority of Muslims, and a smaller percentage of other religions like Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and many others comprise the whole country.

Yet, you’d still see honor killings happening because a Hindu guy chose to marry a Muslim girl. Or communal violence based on religion that is more often than not a result of dirty religious politics.

In all this religious mayhem, I sometimes wonder, would we possibly have more fundamental freedom of religion, if each individual chose their religious beliefs just like we choose classes in college?

The power to choose principles and create your own version

What if I don’t want to be a Hindu, or a Christian, or a Muslim or a Jew or follow any other single religion in its entirety?

Why can’t I pick and choose select principles of each religion to concoct my own version of religion that I truly believe in completely, rather than having had some rules forced on me while I choose to follow a subset?

Can I not pick the fundamental equality of the Baha’i faith, add a dash of tolerance from the most fundamental Hinduism (not the intolerant kind we see today), take a bit of welfare from Islam, and top it up with a final dash of Ahimsa — or non-violence from Jainism?

There sure exist cross-pollinations of religions in today’s world but none that truly allows you to follow multiple religions at your own will, picking your own principles.

A chance to see and explore each one before making a decision

The beauty of college is that you’ve had about 17–18 years of schooling where you’ve dabbled around with a series of subjects and classes. You know how much you hate math, or love science, or have an inclination towards languages.

You know if you can stand the sight of a frog being cut into various pieces in anatomy class. You have an idea if the world of the laws of Physics is one for you or you’d rather be talking about the philosophies of Socrates and Aristotle.

That isn’t really the case with religion. The age for baptism in Christianity or the equivalent of it in other religions is often quite young, and you can’t expect a child so young to make their own religious choices. Hence, for most of us, our religions are chosen at birth, by virtue of the family we’re born into.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we got to study a bit of every religion throughout our formative years, and got to make a choice later as we head into our adult lives, or at any time we felt comfortable or informed enough to make one? I’d argue that would make a lot of sense, and help us truly embrace religion than blindly follow one we’re born into.

An understanding that would allow us to be truly secular

Secularism is set into the constitution and laws of many countries and is something that’s one must follow to be politically correct. Respect towards all religions and the freedom to follow religious practices for everyone alike.

Yet, most countries and most people are pseudo-secular at best. Most of us are secular when it is convenient to be secular. Haven’t we all been guilty of making some remark in our lives that offended one religion or another in some way, shape or form? How many of us wouldn’t care at all if we saw a person of one religion offering their traditional prayers in the place of worship of another?

The truth is those things happen and people care more than they should. Secularism can only truly be embraced, if we’re at least in part familiar with all the religions that exist out their — their beliefs and the history that they come from.

A shot at adapting religion to modern times

One of the problems I often have with religion in its strictest form is that it fails to adapt to the developments of society in general. We live in a modern world, and a lot has changed over the years and generations.

The attire that we dawn isn’t the same as what our forefathers did. We don’t speak the same way as our parents did, let alone going too far back. The access to information, technology, and other aspects of the modern world have meant the people of today are vastly different than their prior generations.

Why, then, have religions not evolved over centuries and centuries? Why do we have the same rules and restrictions or “guidelines” from the religious texts and teachings?

Religion would give itself a better shot at survival with the generations of tomorrow if we allowed it to be a lot more flexible than the rigid forms that we know today. We’d see more kids willing to explore and almost cherry-pick their own principles to follow, and make their own religions, than choosing to be complete atheists, almost for a lack of a better option.

Religion, to me, is something that we probably need if it is understood and adopted in the right way. It is merely a set of beliefs and principles that give you faith and a purpose in life, and a string of hope to hold on to especially when the times get tough. I don’t know if there is a “God” or there isn’t but believing in a higher power can often lend humans that extra invisible support, that we all need, ever so often.