The Obligatory Religious Post

It’s Valentine’s Day. Do you realize what this means? It’s time for a religious post. I’m not going to enforce my religious beliefs upon any of you. That would be crazy. This is just a post about something religious that I am doing. For my psychology of religion class, we have the opportunity to earn extra credit by performing a religious practice for one month (four weeks). The requirement is that you have to do a religious practice that is different from your own. I decided to choose fasting since it seems to play some part in various religions. In order to do this though, I had to pick a specific religion and use their fasting practice. I decided to use the Baha’i’ Faith’s practice of the Nineteen Day Fast. Yes, I know that nineteen days and one month do not sync. For this project, I am going to fast on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for four weeks. This should amount to 12 days total. I realize that it isn’t as dedicated at the Ninteen Days Fast, but I still plan on learning something from the experience. I also plan on praying and meditating as per the religious protocols every day during this month. This is a major change to my everyday life. I am a mixture of agnostic and atheist, so I normally don’t pray or meditate or fast. Even when I was a child, my parents did not strictly follow their religious beliefs. As a result, I always likened praying to asking a genie for a wish. I have no idea what’s going to happen now that I am praying to a god. I don’t expect any major changes to my life after this project, but I have been wrong many, many, many, many times in the past. 

Also as a result of this project, I am going to deeply explore another religion. In order to fully understand why I am fasting, praying, and meditating, I have to have deeper knowledge of my religion. I do not think that there are any Baha’i Faith churches in the city that I live in or on my college campus, but I might be wrong. In the end, I feel that I will learn a great deal from this project, and I think it will allow me to better understand other cultures.

See? I didn't critique anyone's religion in this post. But Scientology is still stupid.