The Path to Salvation: Rejecting Habits & Embracing Faith - Essay Sample

Introduction

In the spiritual basis and foundation, the common belief of accepting and inviting salvation into our lives becomes intertwined with the amount of faith our hearts discern for a particular religious affiliation or the act of saving one's soul or the act of redemption to avoid sin (Doherty). It happens that faith comes from submitting to a higher deity, which means that changing our trends and habits could only lead us to salvation. For salvation to affect one's lives positively means denying our physical bodies from the impure nature or also to change how our mind tends to have a network of sinful thoughts of the world and to conceptualize the word of God into our bodies, mind, and spirit or in other words that one should live a modest life. Similarly, salvation demands us to disown other spiritual realms such as superstition or cultic ways and to follow a religious faith and thus salvation, which recognizes God as the only High Deity. This paper will describe Hughes's interpretation of salvation as well as Mead's analysis of superstition as related to new ones plus their implications in the secular world.

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In Langston Hughe's "Salvation," Hughes is a young 12-year-old boy who readily accepts his aunt's word on salvation. He takes it literally that with salvation, anyone sees Jesus and even touch and feel Jesus, Hughes refers to God as a human form. However, during the revival at Reed's church, Hughes becomes aware and enlightened on the actual real meaning of salvation. Although he responds with the backlash of activities that brings Jesus into his heart and gets Hughes saved, Hughes reveals that hypocrisy dominated the church into luring Christians to the fold. Hughes lashes out at the persistence of the old to lay out ideologies that did not hold water in his contemporary world. His analytical mind on Westley's salvation triggered his emotions and led him to bow to pressure to in order to get saved (Vainio). Westly sat on the altar looking down, wishing Hughes would take the same step in accepting Jesus as one's savior. Hughes's trail of thoughts made him analyze his conscience that contradicted the initial belief that he would be able to feel and see Jesus. Finally, Hughes receives salvation. Even though he accepts salvation, he regrets his actions and, consequently, denounces his religious faith since Hughes lied to the worshippers about seeing Jesus.

Hughes's experiences tend to illustrate that the ultimate salvation depends on the individual revelation of Jesus. He sat surrounded by his aunt and elders in the mourning bench, ready to receive Jesus to reveal himself in human form, but Jesus was not visible and not found (Mullen ). He submits that the pressure from his aunt amidst the wailing church coerced him to the pulpit. This extract reveals that Hughes believed that through the revival time, he would be able to confirm her aunt's statements but later proves the belief had no impact on salvation, but instead t relied on one's faith (Mullen ). It is clear at the end that Hughes does not believe his religious faith would lead him to salvation.

Hughes uses his logical reasoning to study the religion presented to him by his aunt. He analyzes the environment and the state of church members, which he finds chaotic and relates the atmosphere as a music scene, Christians use hymns and music to soothe the soul and also to bring one close to the Saviour (Mullen ). The mourning, chants, and wailing sounds filled his presence. He becomes intrigued and perturbed, which leads him to question the relevance of salvation. The fact that his aunt had explained earlier on the meaning of salvation, Hughes becomes knowledgeable in Christian faith, which puts his curious mind to play. He interrogates the surroundings, superstitions, behavior, and attitude of the congregants and finally decides to denounce Christianity. Hughes perceives the Christian Faith in a literal way and believes it as an act of brainwash and that the Supreme being, God does not exist.

In Margaret Mead's "New Superstitions for Old," Mead acknowledges that superstition is here to stay even in the modern world. She terms superstition as any old thinking and ways of doing things that superimpose on contemporary living and that superstitions are based on culture and also social norms of individuals within a society. She argues that some superstitions still impact contemporary society's beliefs. Some relate to social classes forged or may depend on family settings. For instance, some people believe in exiting from the back door of the house if they are traveling. It could easily fall as a joke, but it makes one feel safe; the human mind, which is exceptional, tends to make one believe that one is exceptionally safe. These are superstitious beliefs (Mullen ). The reason why superstitious beliefs still drive the contemporary lifestyle likened to "transitional" toys. Just the same reason as children use toys to disconnect with reality, superstition bears some qualities related to the toys and tends to divert one from the real world (Rossi). Toys provide the transitional effect, thus enabling an individual to analyze the environment, the norms, their causes, and also effect with reasonable knowledge. As a result, individuals tend to prove and innovate particular superstitions that wimble well with the secular world.

Mead proposes that superstition takes time for the modern generation to understand fully and adapt to it. Although society tends to pass old superstitious rituals to the newer generation to facilitate the generation to know one's identity and true worth, there is a high likelihood of a new generation in the secular world that tends to evaluate the basis and relevance of the belief (Griffiths, et al. ). That is the reason why the majority of young adults, after leaving their paternal homes, the influence diminishes, thus giving in to new knowledge that's appreciated to them. This transitional effect may reveal itself in a dream with the expectation of making a choice. While dreams may either be good or bad, some individuals tend to have partial denials, and half accepted rituals, dreams also tend to forecast what is about to happen or flashback memories. The merging of both worlds makes life even that much better.

Conclusively, Hughes finally denounces Christian faith, which he had earlier on embraced and believed on the foundations of it. However, Hughes's decision to give in to the Christian faith, also involved observation of revival events, people as well his logical reasoning to substantiate the religious belief (Vainio). Hughes only knew little regarding the Christian faith because of his aunt's influence, and one cannot understand the actual basis of Christian faith by only observations, it requires some years of practice and also spiritual enlightenment brought about by sacred scriptures of the Bible. On the other hand, Mead believes that superstition still presents itself in the secular world in several many ways. Although religious faith and superstition help consolidate our belief systems, they aid individuals to transverse the different worlds of secular, superstition, and scientific architecture, which makes individuals appreciate the world as it is. Superstitions also tend to create a haven for individuals since one feels safe and tends to have a sense of belonging to one's culture.

Works Cited

Doherty, C. "1 the enlightenment critique of the Christian religion: The 'Scandal' of particularity & superstition." Maurice Blondel on the Supernatural in Human Action, 2017, pp. 12-39, doi:10.1163/9789004342446_003.

Griffiths, O., et al. "Superstition predicts perception of illusory control." British Journal of Psychology, vol. 110, no. 3, 2018, pp. 499-518, doi:10.1111/bjop.12344.

Hughes, Langston. "Salvation." Wake Tech: English 111 Reader, edited by Wayde Vickrey, 2nded., Hayden-McNeil, 2017, pp. 93-95.

Mead, Margaret. "New Superstitions for Old." Wake Tech: English 111 Reader, edited by Wayde

Mullen, L. A. The chance of salvation: A history of conversion in America. 2017.

Rossi, E. "Understanding religion, governing religion." Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017, doi:10.1093/oso/9780198794394.003.0005.

Vainio, O. "Salvation and religious diversity: Christian perspectives." Religion Compass, vol. 10, no. 2, 2016, pp. 27-34, doi:10.1111/rec3.12195.

Vickrey, 2nd ed., Hayden-McNeil, 2017, pp. 165-169.