What religion are you in?

[rickthestick2]

clandecyon said:
What religion am I in? :) People are "in" locations, organizations, employment, school, clubs, cults, sanity (or what any single person would dub it), etc. "In" is a word leading to a state of existence. Do you mean what I have come to conclusions on based on my experience and rationalization of the world around me? Do you mean, "what do I believe to have happened to the world in the beginning?" "What do I believe is the overall essence of everything?" "What do I believe will happen when we die?" Or are you wanting to know if we superficially see ourselves as part of a sect or group of people who think a particular way? I'm sure I could fit in at a lot of different organizations that seem to believe similar things, however, I don't know if I could say that I am "in" any labeled system.

I "believe" that there are more important things than being stated as "in" something, even if you just so happen to be in something. Seeing yourself as "in" something should not be the reason that you are in it. There are purposes that bring us into certain states and if you see yourself as complete by being "in" one of those states then you have by most definitions of the states, lost the purpose for which they exist, therefore making your own state that differs from the actual state.

To be fair, there are three instances I can think of offhand that being "in" something might be able to stand singularly, and I attempt to look closer at each: If being in the group satisfies a purpose in itself (already touched on slightly), if claiming participation in a group helps on grounds of quick communication, and if a group is needed to leverage a purpose.

Many times just being in a group or state can satisfy a purpose as mentioned above, if your purpose is to have a feeling of belonging. But that purpose is still more important than the state, and you could satisfy that purpose with many different states, making the state that you are in of little significance to be mentioned. By having your own agenda in the state, you are still alone in your purposes and will not ever give a complete effort toward the same tasks that everyone else is moving towards at the time. You could though, find others in the group that need a feeling of belonging which would give you all the same agenda, but then aren't you just making friends and creating stability for yourself?

The other circumstance is to use a general state to help explain your thoughts and purposes. Those who are Christian are understood to believe in a higher power, God, his embodiment as a human, Jesus, his death, and resurrection. If this is a background that you want to portray, then you might use the term "Christian." But Christian means a lot of things these days to many different people because of its history and those other Christians that have come in contact with the audience in question. "Christian" could mean hate, cult, hypocrisy, ignorance, and blind to some while meaning love, unity, higher purpose, enlightened, and blessed to others. And for a more petty reason, can you be "in" Christianity? Does that even make sense? haha

In an extension of this concept, being "in" a group of like-purpose individuals can heighten the attention given to your cause for better result. The Population seems to take more notice when a larger portion of it works together, though that isn't as much the case anymore. We could use the concept of "in a mob," here. ha Each has their own driven purpose and while united, they are individual people with their own purposes. None of them are going to look around them and say, "I'm in a group." Though they know that, they are there because they want to make a difference and just happen to be doing it in the same place. After they achieve that goal, despite the friends that were made and celebrations held in remembrance, they will never be the same group as the purpose would be different for new groupings, and while some members might share the new purposes with the old, the next time, they are grouping in another purpose which recycles the idea until you become an extremist, which then is a grouping that takes back to the second of these three and as such is only stated for clarity. And even extremists have individual purposes that make them extremists which may not have anything to do with the groups they join.

 That is a highly intelligent post on the analysis of the topic as a whole and i say that i agree with you.

Using Christianity (as i'm a Christian), you really can't be "in" it. You become it or bear it, as it is the term of "Christian". People who bear the name of Christ (Christians) are cursed people due to the curse on Christ himself, and are burdened people, because they live to overcome death. But are they "in" Christianity? No. If that's the case then i don't believe in a religion at all. I am not part of any religious group. I am a Christian and I bear curses, burdens, forgiveness, grace, mercy, blessings, pains, and love of Christianity. 

or something like that...

 

And ive stated this before in the "Is there a God" thread, faith in itself (well at least Christianity) isn't in any way a "bad" thing. It's when the whole concept of a certain faith is curropted due to ethnocentrism, pride, greed, misunderstanding (the number 1 conflict of all human nature i think), and just regular human flaws. This is why i don't understand how people blame the religion for the muderous killings and book burnings and hate stuff instead of the people who did them.