by Veronica Bergschneider

Created on: February 11, 2009   Last Updated: February 16, 2009

To begin getting at what it means to "be religious," one really needs to define "religion" first. Etymologically speaking, the term "religion" derives from the ancient Latin root "re-ligare," meaning "to tie (oneself) back" to someone or something. In philosophical terms, people do this by coming back to a belief in a divine creator or other power higher than humanity.

Oftentimes, people are born into their families' religion, or system of faith based on the ancestors having developed a relationship with the higher powers of the universe. This may work for the person's entire life, or quite possibly, it won't. Many people, including this author, grow up with a spiritual yearning for a stronger connection to the divine creator than their original religion allowed them to experience. Some people arrive at this spiritual understanding and strong connection to their deity by taking classes and following special rituals in their original religion some years after they begin the journey and stick with it for life.

Others, however, seek and search for ways of believing that fit their personal mindsets better than the ways in which they began. They may take courses in school to survey and sample the basic tenets of world religions, fitting together different means of getting to the creator from each system they read about. Through the seeking, many people convert to other religions as they grow both personally and spiritually. As with the term "religion" itself, "conversion" is also a highly personal application in this arena.

Commonly, people do not think that moving between two related schools of thought, such as Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism, to be a conversion. However, to someone who grew up Roman Catholic but without feeling a true understanding of what anyone was saying, coming into Lutheranism later in life can be such a great spiritual awakening as to be conversion when the person discovers a whole new and strong relationship with God at the end of the seeking process.

Finally discovering the love of God in such a strong way and allowing it to lead into loving other people and the rest of God's creation as strongly as God loves us leads us into truly finding ourselves and the passions that make us happy and able to change the world for the better. After all, religious faith leading to love of creation also makes our creator happy and better able to reveal to us how to go on living right and productive lives.

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