hist. 21 Research Journal entry #7: my personal religious revelation
i am currently having very serious problems concentrating on finishing my term paper. while many here at furman and in the region haven't been personally affected, the murder of Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor has had a big impact on me during the last 24 hours. I've lived in the Washington, DC area my entire life, and have more recently become a VERY big fan of the Redskins- i follow every game (hard to do 500+ miles away), read every article, and was able to get Joe Gibbs to sign one of my jerseys during their training camp this past summer. Sean Taylor was probably THE most popular player in Washington, and he was actually the first player that got me interested in the Redskins when he was drafted in 2004, which makes this even harder.
the combination of him turning his life around from a troubled past, his rise into NFL stardom (and a future that quite possibly could have had him be one of the best EVER), and the shockingly senseless act of violence (in his own bedroom) that leaves his fiancee and 1 year old daughter with an incomprehensible loss, has led me to realize some things about myself spiritually. now for the past couple of months, i have really tried to evaluate what my opinions and views of religion are. as a result, i have become very skeptical of the human influences in the "writings" of divine beings in most all organized religions- but especially in Christianity and its Bible (the religion i was born into). and yet, i found myself praying multiple times for him and his family, even though i hadn't prayed in years to the Christian God that all my recent suspicions had centered around. i realized that I was doing the exact thing that I had hypothesized during this transitional period and had written in my paper- that i turned to religion for comfort when tragedy struck and when i felt helpless to control forces, such as the Taylor killing that must have some supernatural influence. i found myself believing in what those mourning Taylor have said... that "God is always in control" and had a purpose for Taylor and that there was nothing any human could have done to alter this.
I've found that you can be as skeptical of organized religion as you want- but when you find yourself in situations that are unfathomable and seemingly senseless, the only answers you can manage to make sense of and the only thing that will really comfort you is the hope that some higher power has complete control and is doing these unexplainable things because it is for the best. and no matter how different religions tries to explain how this divine force works, not believing in any will make it impossible for a person to find the answers they need to comfort them.
i already had chosen such a research topic because it had become a very important dilemma for me to work through, but this tragedy has allowed for at least one positive, albeit insignificant to the individual situation. this revelation obviously isn't very applicable as a source for a research paper, and it would be quite a push to incorporate this into the racial division of southern protestant churches in the 1870s. but, the way my paper is organized is that i begin with a smaller, more objective event and progress to the infinitely broader and more subjective topic of the purpose for religion in society. so at least indirectly i will try to find a way to incorporate these thoughts into the final portion of the broader section of my research paper. and I'm sure I still have MUCH more thinking left to do involving the death of Taylor and its effects on my view of religion.
the combination of him turning his life around from a troubled past, his rise into NFL stardom (and a future that quite possibly could have had him be one of the best EVER), and the shockingly senseless act of violence (in his own bedroom) that leaves his fiancee and 1 year old daughter with an incomprehensible loss, has led me to realize some things about myself spiritually. now for the past couple of months, i have really tried to evaluate what my opinions and views of religion are. as a result, i have become very skeptical of the human influences in the "writings" of divine beings in most all organized religions- but especially in Christianity and its Bible (the religion i was born into). and yet, i found myself praying multiple times for him and his family, even though i hadn't prayed in years to the Christian God that all my recent suspicions had centered around. i realized that I was doing the exact thing that I had hypothesized during this transitional period and had written in my paper- that i turned to religion for comfort when tragedy struck and when i felt helpless to control forces, such as the Taylor killing that must have some supernatural influence. i found myself believing in what those mourning Taylor have said... that "God is always in control" and had a purpose for Taylor and that there was nothing any human could have done to alter this.
I've found that you can be as skeptical of organized religion as you want- but when you find yourself in situations that are unfathomable and seemingly senseless, the only answers you can manage to make sense of and the only thing that will really comfort you is the hope that some higher power has complete control and is doing these unexplainable things because it is for the best. and no matter how different religions tries to explain how this divine force works, not believing in any will make it impossible for a person to find the answers they need to comfort them.
i already had chosen such a research topic because it had become a very important dilemma for me to work through, but this tragedy has allowed for at least one positive, albeit insignificant to the individual situation. this revelation obviously isn't very applicable as a source for a research paper, and it would be quite a push to incorporate this into the racial division of southern protestant churches in the 1870s. but, the way my paper is organized is that i begin with a smaller, more objective event and progress to the infinitely broader and more subjective topic of the purpose for religion in society. so at least indirectly i will try to find a way to incorporate these thoughts into the final portion of the broader section of my research paper. and I'm sure I still have MUCH more thinking left to do involving the death of Taylor and its effects on my view of religion.