This I Believe

My religion has taught me about what is right and wrong. Not only that, but it has helped me to stay strong whenever I face my problems through my religion’s community that support me all the time. I do realize that the definition of right and wrong is different to different people. While some religions may not be right for you in terms of what you can/cannot do, what you should believe in or how strict it is, there are a lot of religions in the world and I believe that you can one that fits you best. What I would like to share today is my belief that having the right religion plays a part in making the world a better place to live in.

Just believing in God may not be enough because religion offers much more than just believing in God. Religion teaches you what it believes as sinful. Some religions even help you to understand about and respect other religions or even other cultures, which can help to prevent conflict between beliefs. Going to the places of worship, which mostly does not differentiate people from different racial background, strengthen the bond between them and thus, prevent racial discrimination or racial war from happening. Additionally, it also exposes us to the need of people around us.

There are many ways to make a better world. What I have in mind is about helping other people and taking care of our environment. Helping other people, especially the ones in Third World country who live in poverty, is our concern because we have been paying these people low wages so that we can afford to have cheaper goods. Moreover, as people around the world is extracting the oil, and polluting the world, which can kill millions of people through the toxic waste or even polluted air, we are leaving nothing for our future generation.

Today, we can also see that many big corporations have started to be more green and sustainable. And, what I believe is that religion can actually play a big role for the CEO to make this move, for example, CEO of Interface, a $1 billion carpeting business. Carpeting is a toxic as nylon requires pools of petroleum and factories flush their dye water, which full of heavy metals and toxin into streams. Over the past few years, Interface has been more sustainable by eliminating the fourth of nylon, offering recyclable carpet tile. The need to be sustainable is realized by Ray Anderson, the founder, CEO and chairman who is baptized. “Drawing on his Baptist root and his engineer’s head for facts, he has spread the gospel of sustainability.” While religion alone may not be the drive for this sustainability act, I believe that religion plays a big role for him to start to care about other people and the future generation.

I realize that not all religious people are holy and caring. However, when their beliefs are very strong, while not necessarily fanatic, there is this good heart at the back of their head that push their good deeds, such as helping the poor, and stop caring for just maximizing shareholders’ profit for once.