Saturday, March 16, 2013

Expressions of Faith in India and America

Having grown up in both India and America, and lived for extended periods of time in Georgia, Spain, Costa Rica, Germany, and Italy- I have lived with a wide variety of people from all different types of religious and spiritual backgrounds. Religion was always an important part of my upbringing and my parents were very dedicated to their values and understanding of a higher power. Furthermore, my childhood was influenced a great deal by a wide variety of Catholic influences. My grandfather stressed that I wake up at 5:30 in the morning in order to attend daily mass when I lived with him. My boarding schools in India also had a similar approach.

Ever since I was young, I struggled to reconcile my understanding of faith and the world around me with my daily life and actions. I took a year off in between seventh and eighth grade and I remember that, during this year, I felt like there were a great deal of inconsistencies with my own public and private expression of my faith and that of those who were close to me. I felt like it was weird for people to be hypocritical and didn't understand why people sometimes lived lives that seemed to be duplicitous. Since I was an American person living in India, I felt like many people were more open with me than they were in general and they assumed that my worldview would be more tolerant of a liberal lifestyle.

I was at the memorial mass of my dad's oldest brother and I had a pretty interesting conversation with my cousin at the luncheon afterwards. We had not really talked about religion until then but we had a pretty in depth conversation. We had a lot of common ground and it seemed like we both felt that people in America generally try to make a lot more logical approach to religion than the approach in India that seems to be more dogmatic. However, we disagreed on one key issue- she felt that Americans incorporated the social justice applications of the teachings of our faith more seriously than people in India and that people in India are more focused on helping their family and community but are less sensitive to social problems and larger injustice. I feel like she should have been a bit more nuanced in her approach towards the issue. Though it looks like what she had stated objectively seems to be correct, I feel like a lot of religious groups- including Syro Malabar Catholics (whom she had explicitly stated tend to be less sensitive) try to do their part in making the world a better place....