One World

Understand Each other

Culture has several meanings but mostly it’s a belief system and way of life, language. Culture can also be defined as a group of people with the same belief and acceptance. Everyone in a certain culture has the same beliefs rather from religious practices and ways of living and rising of children and diet. To better understand a new culture we first have to remove any prejudice we may have and keep an open mind and know that we are not there to judge but to gain an understanding of that culture. The only way we can get along is by understanding and respecting every aspect of each other’s lives. The most controversial parts of culture that seems to always raise people’s temper are religious beliefs.

Religion and politics are the two subjects people don’t seem to ever agree on, and to my understand it is because when it comes to religion we are close minded no matter if you are open minded to everything else that may be affecting your life but the one subject that usually gets people anger. That is because these ideology were feed to us from before we were able to speak or even understand the world around us, we already being exposed to these ideologies, that makes them part of our own belief. I remember walking to the mall from my car and a young man approached me and started speaking to me about religion and asked me several probing question such as, do I accept Jesus Christ as the son of god? Of course I replied “yes”, he proceeded to preach to me and some of the stuff he was saying sounds pretty good and as we were talking my husband walked to us and he asked him the same questions and my husband being Muslim, answered Jesus Christ was a prophet and not the son of god, he stopped talking to me and focused in on my husband, my husband grew up a pastor’s son and nephew studied both bibles and knows a lot and when the young men noticed that he was out matched theologically, he said something till this day still haunts me and that is “all Africans, Asians, Muslim were all doomed to go to hell, and there is nothing they can do to change that”, my husband laughed and we walked away, it was then I saw just how close minded some people can be.

I’ve always respected people’s way of life, because I’m a foreigner in a foreign land which means I had to learn their rules and laws in order to live and prosper amongst them. If someone is curious and want to ask me any question about my culture I would be more than happy to share my world with them, because the more they know about my culture the easier it would be for all of us to get along. I believe if everyone takes the time to ask someone questions about his or her culture instead of creating rumors and assumptions this world would be a more peaceful world.