College Application Essay

Hey everyone! This is an essay I submitted to a Christian college where I was asked to explain my interest in the religious emphasis at the school. Enjoy!

The first time I held a Bible in my hand was just over a year ago. I opened it up, not knowing quite what to expect, and found myself immersed in the book of Proverbs. Feeling the rough pages of the aged book on my fingers, I flicked through its contents. The first verse I found was: “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend” (Proverbs 27: 17). Even thought I had heard it said that much of the Bible is written metaphorically and in parables, I had no idea what it meant or what context to digest it in.

With the hopes of better understanding the verse, I decided to get together with a group of my Christian friends later that week. As we were socializing, the topic shifted toward religion and the Bible. I soon began questioning them about their individual beliefs and how they had come to them. Then, a close friend of mine asked me what had piqued my curiosity. In answering her query, I informed everyone that I had recently read the Bible but had trouble wrestling with the many words and hidden meanings. I subsequently brought up the verse in Proverbs.

My friends chuckled among themselves. Eventually, they said that the verse was discussing the exact thing we were currently doing; talking about God, giving our different opinions on his nature and discussing the meaning of life. They went on to explain that it tells us we can gain wisdom, a word I had noticed repeated a great deal in Proverbs, from communicating with friends and companions.

From that moment on, something drove me to read more of this book and about this book. The librarian, also another Christian at my school, was very helpful the vast number of times I sought out books about God and religion. The year went on and I attended my first church gathering on a freezing cold December morning in Peja, Kosovo. The sermon was directed, in Albanian, by the father of a missionary friend that attended my school. I listened intently as he discussed a character called Paul from another book in the Bible called Acts. I went home and re-read the verses he cited in English, hoping to get a better understanding of the message within them.

My life from that point on has not changed much. If anything, the fervor I have for understanding God and religion has only been amplified. Mounting to a burning passion, it has also driven me to write a blog about my understanding of various religious and biblical concepts. I hope it will one day be the online version of the first discussions about God I had with my friends.

I do not know if the two are related, but in the same time my interest in psychology and counseling also grew. To my pleasant surprise, I found many books and an abundance of online sources that discussed the two themes interchangeably. I kept reading and, most importantly, kept discussing and sharing my opinions with whoever had the time and patience to listen to me.

That is probably the one thing that has made ****** University my number one choice for where I wish to spend the next four years of my life. The first sentence in the online page of the Psychology department at ****** says that it “integrates comprehensive study of the human mind with the Christian faith.” I was, and still am, immediately sold to the idea. I had finally found the place where my two passions could be intertwined. My mind raced to all the people I would meet; people like me yet at different places in their own spiritual journeys.

Everything I know today about Jesus and the Bible has come from my companions and a community that dedicates their lives to living a life like Christ. Despite my interest in learning about Christianity, I am very aware that there is so much I do not know. I feel that the strong religious emphasis that ****** provides can help answer some of the many questions I have. Immersing myself in a community devoted to Christ and his impact on humanity would greatly help me in my own journey through life while allowing me to contribute a slightly different perspective on the never ending discussion about God and how we, as mere humans, can inch closer to him.

The Beauty of Science

I remember growing up and feeling bad for the people that tried to be perfect all the time. They would set immeasurable standards for themselves and, sub consciously, for others that happened to be around them. Needless to say, such demanding a criterion was never met. Whenever failure presented itself to these people, they would scold themselves for not being perfect. Their entire lives would be put on hold as they fell into pits of depression for not being the right dress size or not getting an A on every single test they took. Such individuals were quite the sights for sore eyes.

During my childhood, I was bombarded with the lovely concept that mistakes happen and that they are truly unavoidable (the analogy of death and taxes comes to mind). What really matters, my teachers and parents would incessantly remind me, is that you learn from your mistakes so as to not fall victim to them again.

Science is blessed in possessing such an ideology. Religion, however, is not.

In all the times I've come into contact with a form of science I've been intrigued and mesmerized at the wonders of the things that surround me. I could describe such experiences as enlightening, humbling and even jaw-droppingly awe-inspiring. But, I would have never attributed the word "beauty" as an adjective to science. It never really came to my mind and if it had, I would have most likely shrugged it off without too much attention.

But, this is where the true beauty of science lies. It is allowed to be wrong. I could even go as far as saying that at times it is even required to be wrong, leading us one step closer to what is inevitably right and true. There have been so many wonderful and imaginative theories that have come our way because of science. Most have been proven, by science, to be untrue. What I personally find amazing is that the most wonderful and the most imaginative and the most elaborate theories have been the ones that have withstood the rigor of proof and evidence on the road to being truthful.

Take our solar system, for example. Two thousand years ago, humans would have been astoundingly baffled by the "theory" that our planet is one of a group that circles this giant ball of gas that doesn't seem so giant or "gassy" in the sky. They would have surely laughed at this elaborate idea and deemed it to be the work dreams and imaginative thinking. Many theories explaining our Earth and its relation to the Sun and the Moon and the other planets have been suggested. They have all been slowly proven to be untrue until, with the furthering of science, we can be certain that what we believe to be correct today truly is. The undeniable, unfalsifiable and incomparable beauty of science at its best; always asking, always probing and always scrutinizing.

Then, on the other end of the spectrum, we have religion. Each, or at least most, comes with some sort of book that explains everything and abundantly supplies its adherers with all the knowledge of the world, heaven, hell and all the in-betweens. I honestly don't see why we can't title such holy books as "ultimate how-to's on...everything!"

Most of them, unfortunately, were written a long time before science could even have a say in the matter. And with the development of science, most of the stories told in such books have gone from being considered the "one and only ultimate truth" to highly suspect and, at times, downright absurd and clearly untrue. But religion, of course, cannot go back and instruct Moses to change the whole "six day theory" because the Earth most certainly is not merely 6,000 years old. Nay, they cannot travel back in time and tell the Middle Eastern men who wrote the Old Testament that dinosaurs existed and that they might want to include them when passing off their works as the "words of god."

Religion, with all the lovely amounts of dogma that come along with it, is forced to reconcile scientific truth with their beliefs if they want to retain them. They aren't blessed with the notion that everyone makes mistakes and that they can be fixed and altered. These books and the believers peddling them are compelled to come up with fickle theories and absurd claims to explain the old age of our Earth, continental drift, the "theory" of evolution and so many more scientifically proven truths. My personal favorite of these irrational theories that attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable is the notion that dinosaurs did exist and lived happily with humans in same 6,000 year time span that the Earth has supposedly been around for (one cannot help but think of the Flintstones here)!

It is the job of science to question and scrutinize itself, constantly looking for possible errors and mistakes that may have gone untraced. Scientists the world over disagree on many things (such an idea may come as a wonderful thing to the apologist) and probe each other’s works. And when they are wrong, far from falling into depression like the perfectionists I grew up with, they get back up to the drawing board and start over again in seeking for the next, more elaborate theory that is surely to be the correct one. Unmistakably, this is the beauty of science at its most beautiful.

Sex and Survival

Corporations and business are nothing more than profit-seeking, money-making enterprises with a lust for green. The Nestle group is no different. Whatever decisions are pondered by the fat cats on the top floor are first pumped through many risk/reward programs. Recently, they have, together with their risk analyzing machines, decided that marketing powdered milk to famished pregnant women in Africa would be a wise business venture.

They first traveled to these countries offering free samples of the product to these women. So-called “scientists” informed the uneducated mothers-to-be that it would be a wise alternative for their babies to drink the powdered milk as it contained many nourishing entities that could be found naturally in the famished bodies they possessed. Naturally, they accepted without hesitation. What they weren't told was that they would eventually have to buy the product. There's no such thing as a free lunch, right!?

Of course, the women could not spend the little money they had in such a lavish way when it had to be used for food, water and/or medicine. Eventually, after becoming dependent on the free sample, their bodies gave out and no longer produced the natural milk, thereby providing quite the predicament for these women: buy the Nestle product or watch your babies slowly perish.

This was a story we analyzed in my Senior English class a few weeks ago. After reading and discussing this appalling report, our teacher posed a seemingly simple question for her students: what two things motivate people do the things they do?

Being somewhat aware of Freud and his theory, I answered that sex and survival are the two main contributing factors to our decisions. Being in high school, this statement was obviously met with a roar of laughter. I'm never one to turn down an opportunity to entertain my peers, but I was very serious with my hypothesis. The more I thought about it, in my admittedly angered state, the more it made sense to me.

How dare we judge Nestle for their actions!? They're a business. It's their job to think of ways to make more and more money. What they did was actually, however sadistic and cruel, quite a marvelous sales tactic. What better way to push your product than making your audience practically addicted to it. Ingenious! They were merely acting upon the instinct of survival. We all do it. We go to school, to go to college, to get a degree, to get a job and make money so we'll stay alive. Survival; and not too different from the kind we see in the animal kingdom.

Then there's sex. Have you ever wondered why we spend such elongated periods of time in front of a mirror? Sex is certainly the culprit. We get our hair done and buy clothes that accentuate our figures to attract the opposite gender in the hopes that we will stand out among other "competitors.” Hours are thrown away at bars as we woefully socialize with other humans hoping to make them want to mate with us. Like I stated before, the more and more I considered our society, the more the premise made sense to me.

Later that day, after the effects of the angering article had finally worn off, I remembered having once seen a man feeding a homeless person. At the time I didn't dedicate too much thought to the act. But this time around, it bothered me.

It just didn't...fit. He may have had an abundance of money, but just throwing it away to the "scrubs of civilization" didn't improve his chances of survival at all. In fact, that act only lessened his chances of surviving in today's world. And it certainly did nothing to help him get laid. Sure, many women would have considered him to be giving and generous and loving (all desirable traits in a mate), but no females were within sight. The simple act of taking money out of one's pocket to feed another man contradicted the entire theory.

As much as it pains me to say this most terrible of clichés, I think I "saw God" in that man. People have always sought him out; indeed, they will be forever searching for the divine. They will snoop around for Jesus at church. Other's will marvel at a Mosque when looking for Allah or sit in a synagogue seeking the wisdom of Yahweh. What these people do not seem to have realized is that they need not stare up into the heavens to find God. They aren't required to read words from pages within one of the many "holy" books that have unfortunately found their way into our hearts, minds and souls.

All they have to do is look within themselves and decide whether or not they have “found him.”