The Problem Of Religious Freedom
Religious freedom means the tolerance to different theological systems of belief. This represents a growing problem of disturbing a fundamental human right to express what you believe in. “Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it,” said G.K. Chesterton, an English writer. In my humble opinion, this quote illustrates one of today’s most important problem.
To my mind, religion influences our everyday life. On the one hand, it’s something intimate which concerns our soul. That’s why nobody can point you what you should believe in and to what God you have to pray. It’s up to you! It means that only you are available to decide to be an atheist or to choose the faith that is closer to your soul.
On the other hand, religion influences the policy. There are many conflicts and even wars because of religion. One of the causes is that religion transformed from an inner aspect of our life to the weapon, which destroys our planet.
This has led to different kinds of obstacles, which hinder people to live in peace. For example, you can lose your job or position because of expressing religious beliefs or not be able to become a foster parent. One of the consequences of this is even doing some tasks at work that go against your beliefs. It should be borne in mind that a great amount of schools teaches sex education in a way that’s fundamentally contrary to their church teaching. This fact reminds me the situation that concerns my classmate. He and his parents were Baptists. Once when we had Music lesson and our teacher asked us to sing the anthem of Ukraine, my classmate refused to do it. He said that it was forbidden for him because of his faith. The teacher was a wise man. He found a compromise asking the pupil to sing another song. I think it was a small but real demonstration of religious freedom in our country.
One possible solution to develop religious freedom is trying to find compromises and always respect feelings of other people. We should remember ancient times when conflicts concerning religion led to bloodshed. Therefore, our goal is not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
In conclusion, I want to emphasize the fact that we have to raise our voices to defend religious freedom, to talk about this problem, to respect every person and ourselves in order to live in a better world.
