There was a time, back in elementary school, when I was a God-fearing, Jesus-loving, churchgoing, Catholic child. Catecismo classes were the highlight of my week, and whereas my classmates received their primera comunión in the second or third grade, I panicked as I tried to go through that same process a couple of years later. From my perspective, being religious was a duty; and for some, it still is. Whether it be going to Church, praying before bed, or confessing our sins, I used to feel like these were chores that should be fulfilled in our everyday lives. It would only be a matter of time before I started to realize that religion wasn’t a liberating lifestyle; in fact, it had become quite restrictive.  

Being Catholic started to lose meaning for me ever since I received that bland, white cuerpo de Jesús 8 years ago. I began to wonder: was going to church truly some sort of religious pilgrimage that I had to practice every Sunday, or was I just losing sleep every weekend to seem to keep my Catholic faith? Was praying before bed a truly spiritual act, wishing for good things from God; or was it only something I did to postpone my bedtime by a few minutes? Was confessing my sins a truly cleansing act, or was it just another way for me to meaninglessly vent my issues into the void, hoping someone would answer? These were the type of questions that kept me up at night - questions for which I did not have the answers. While a Pew Research Center study found that 84 percent of the world claims to be religious - 32.5 percent of those being Christians/Catholics - I seriously doubt that all of them live by the norms and constructs required to be true to their religion, or even believe in their religion at all.

To some, religion is just another way authorities dictate how to live your life. While it can be argued that it is more like a guide than a rulebook, some people do not want to live under the command of any supreme authority. For starters, morality is the aspect of belief that seems to be most promoted, to an extreme. We're told that we must believe in objective morality, in a good-versus-evil conception of the world, and so on - it certainly doesn’t matter to most of us. There are enough non-religious reasons as to why we should stay within universal moral boundaries, mainly because commiting harmful deeds makes us feel bad. While the Bible says "thou shalt not steal," for example - we generally understand that stealing is not okay based on the judeo-christian values we were raised with. Despite this, we don’t do what’s right all the time. We’re prone to making mistakes. We’re human, after all.

Nonetheless, it’s also important to be willing to explore your beliefs and finding what you truly believe matters. If you ever feel like some of the doctrines your religion promotes start to lose some of their meaning, don't be afraid to explore your beliefs. Not questioning our beliefs, be they Catholic, Islamic or atheist, is just as much a lie to ourselves as blindly sticking to any belief system. Having faith in something can be beneficial towards the spiritual improvement of the self, but it is crucial to pick the right things to have faith in. Pick what you truly believe in, because the ideas and notions religions encourage aren’t a good fit for everyone.