What factors of your native culture have informed your religious world view? Explain the impact of these factors.
Who am I? What is my culture? First off I do not have a native culture at all. My mother is from India, specifically Manipur, and my father is from Nepal. When they first married the only common language they had was English so I was born into an English speaking family and that was the first language I learned to speak. Also my parents were both Christians when I born so by default I became a Christian. Even though I am a Nepali citizen I still cannot feel comfortable speaking Nepali with other people and I have no idea what the real Nepali culture is because Nepal is a Hindu nation and the culture is intertwined with aspects of Hinduism. This made me an extremely odd person since I was probably the only English speaking Christian in many of my schools in Nepal. However around the 5th grade my family moved to South Korea and I felt more at home in TCIS that anywhere else because I found many other people who spoke English and also were Christians. Along with a sense of acceptance I also found a new culture, the American Culture. I found this culture extremely appealing as it involves decisions made based on what the person wants to do and who they are mostly for achieving a certain level of entertainment or having fun, in other words: Freedom. I adopted this culture as a substitute for what I never had to a certain degree. I found myself talking more like Americans, using similar words and even acting like them but I never have forgotten who I am. I cannot forget who I truly am because the delicious Indian food my mother makes everyday keeps reminding me that I do have another culture. Actually I have multiple cultures but I consider myself a person of mixed culture now, instead of someone without one. This gives me an advantage over people with only a single culture because I have seen religion through many eyes, the Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Christians of India, Nepal and South Korea have all given me an opportunity to see how other people view religion. I have found out that there are only a small number of young people who have actually found Christ and even they follow another religion they have no heart for it and blindly follow just to fit in with society. It makes me extremely happy that I have found out who I am but at the same time I feel a sense of sadness for those who lie to themselves everyday and push off religion like it was a fly.
I am a fourth generation Christian. For all of my life I have listened to my father preach from the podium and have seen hundreds of fellow Christians come flocking to hear what he has to say. I have a lot of respect for my father and what he does because I can never do that. He captivates the mind a person by revealing the intricacies of life through what the bible says about it. This is so interesting that I find myself listening to him with attention even though I have been doing the same thing every Sunday for all of my life. I have also witnessed what the power of prayer can be, what a demon possessed person looks like, what an exorcism looks like and also what miracles look like. I believe that right now me typing on this blog is a miracle because I should not be alive right now. At the age of two I fell from a two story building and was supposed to hit concrete but instead I landed on a flower pot leaving me with two facial scars. I look at these scars and rejoice everyday that i am alive. I am not a Christian only because my parents believe in Christ but because I believe in him. Through my experiences I have come closer him and have accepted Christianity. Therefore I can say that yes, my parents and the environment I grew up in had a massive impact on how I view the religious world but at the end it is my experiences in the spiritual world that has brought me to Christ.
