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A little boy just wants to be friends; why can’t he play with some of the kids?
He doesn’t know it, but because of a difference the children have no control over, because of how they were raised, barriers have cropped up between him and the other children, all because he does not share their faith.
“There was a couple of times when I was a little kid, I would hear about parents not wanting their kids to hang out with me because I didn’t go to church,” senior Alex Larsen said, “and it broke my heart because I didn’t understand why they couldn’t be my friends.”
Growing up, children have little control over their personal religion, but kids grow and change in other aspects of our lives, many opportunities open to us, and we are free to choose what we want to be involved in and put our faith it.
“[Religion] is just not really the culture we live in,” said Sophie Duijn, foreign exchange from the Netherlands. “It’s just kinda not what we believe in. It’s not how we grow up.”
Any part of how we are raised and what we choose to abide by later in life—any factor ingrained in our personality and lifestyle—is part of who and what we are: it is a factor to our identity, but religion is not always set in stone; as certain aspects of a person’s life change, others open up to discovery and change as they decide who they are and what they want to stand for.
For some, discovering what they want to believe needs to come after realizing who they are. All people control how impactful their beliefs are on their life, and how much they let it shape who they will become.
“It’s hard to say [what impact religion has],” Larsen said. “I think for the super religious people that stand by everything they do and practice it on everyday, everything like that, I think that it has probably a seven or eight impact on their life just because it is the entire foundation of what they are, and I don’t think that that’s necessarily healthy.”
Being non religious, Larsen sees how impactful religion can be, but feels that rather than building identity with religion as a foundation, people need to discover themselves and create their identity before finding what they believe in.
For each person, the factors they allow to influence their life are different, and others see religion as a valuable guide to creating and finding your identity.
“In a lot of ways religion can help you understand who you are and what your purpose is,” junior Savannah Ames said.
Finding purpose is a shared reason for many in being part of their religion or finding their own personal beliefs, and in doing so feel that it gives them something to strive for and to have reason to focus on what they are doing in life.
“I feel like having the faith you have, it makes you a better person because you know that, ‘Oh I’m having someone watch over me right now,’… so I better do the right decision, and I better be the best I can be,” sophomore Adrian Lemus said.
This sense and drive not only motivates people to do and be better, but can impact other vital areas of their life, including their happiness.
“I think that having a religion can change how happy someone is just because of their perception on life,” Larsen said, “and so obviously if you are religious you perceive things differently and you see different opportunities in different places, and so having that view can easily make you more or less happy in certain situations.”
While one’s faith impacts their personal happiness, it can’t go without affecting someone else, and possibly their happiness too.
Varying opinions and personal morals regarding different social issues, personal practices and habits as well as religious viewpoints can cause offense to others even when one is trying to be delicate with and respectful of another’s beliefs; religious discrimination—intentional or not— is a common occurrence.
Duijn has dealt with this coming from the Netherlands to Utah. The transition froma place where the majority of people are not religious, and coming to a predominantly LDS community has proved to be very different regarding the people’s acceptance and openness to different things.
“Sometimes people are like, ‘Oh my gosh she swore, don’t say that,’” Duijn said. “[They want you to] act more like you are LDS, I guess. I mean the people are so used to LDS people when I come they’re like, ‘No.’”
While some choose not to closely associate with those that participate in activities that go against what they hold to be morally correct, others’ narrow-mindedness towards those of other faiths causes barriers between members of different religions, especially in communities where the majority of people are of the same faith.
“Personally, I think religion has a very negative impact on the community and school because we live in a community where the majority of people are LDS, and so when someone isn’t LDS, many tend to judge them or think differently of them just because they have differing beliefs,” Ames said. “I think our community is so much less accepting of others than communities made up of people that have many different beliefs.”
This problem is not specific to Sanpete; people often know of a religion, but don’t take the time to understand what one believes, and more importantly, why those they associate with believe what they do.
“From what I’ve seen, in my opinion, a lot of people are so busy with their own lives that a lot of them don’t take very much time to study enough to know other people,” said LDS seminary teacher Brian Lindow. “And they are so focused on either being right or figuring their own stuff out that they generalize a lot of other groups, and they don’t put in the work needed to figure out what’s actually true about the group.”
While in some cases this is true, not understanding others’ faiths does not have to be a stepping block between people. Lemus has heard stories from his mom when she was in school, how segregated it was, and he feels that it is not that bad; people do well at putting differences aside and accepting those of other religions.
“I don’t really like feel any different [because of my religion],” Navarro said. “It’s just like we all have our own religion, even if the school is mostly one. It’s kind of like if you believe it good, you know good for you, you know like if I believe it good for me, and it’s like our own things you know. And it’s just what we decide to believe in.”
