Note: this was written a few years ago. I am now a Christian.
My secondary school embraced a motto that stayed with me: ora et labora, which means “pray and work.” It was recited at the end of every school prayer, and in moments of anxiety, it often gave me a sense of peace. Still, whenever I think seriously about religion, there is always something that unsettles me.
From what I have seen, religion often follows the pattern of heredity. Many of my religious friends belong to the faith they were raised in. Christian parents raise Christian children, Muslim parents raise Muslim children, and so on. That makes me question how much of belief is truly chosen. Rather than examining different religions and arriving at one because its claims seem most convincing, many people simply inherit the faith of their families.
At the same time, I do not claim that science can explain everything. But when scientific claims are tested, they are grounded in evidence. A scientist explaining the Earth’s roundness, for example, can point to observable phenomena such as the gradual disappearance of ship masts and sails as they move away from land. Religious certainty, by contrast, often seems harder to defend in the same way, and frequently depends on an appeal to faith.
Faith does have value, but it becomes troubling when it is used to avoid critical thought or the need for evidence. The problem grows worse when societies move from quietly tolerating faith to treating it as something beyond question. In most areas of life, we expect people to justify what they believe. Yet religion is often treated differently, as though it is exempt from scrutiny. To me, that feels intellectually unsatisfying. And when people knowingly avoid this problem, yet still insist there is none, it begins to feel like a kind of dishonesty. That is why, when religious friends told me that the secret to faith is to “believe, then see,” rather than “see, then believe,” I always took that advice with caution.
Yet when I spent more time thinking about questions like free will, I began to understand why faith can still matter, even without scientific proof. Once we accept that many things are beyond our control, faith can become a powerful source of motivation when effort alone seems insufficient. It allows people to believe that their lives can still be shaped toward meaning and positive change. On a deeper level, belief in a higher being can also nurture a more compassionate worldview. Where a strictly rational atheist might explain wrongdoing only in terms of personal failure, a person of faith may interpret human weakness differently, and this can sometimes lead to greater empathy and forgiveness.
This is what leaves me unable to settle fully into either camp. On one hand, committing myself to a religion feels like it would compromise my intellectual honesty. On the other hand, maintaining some form of faith in a higher power, even one I cannot prove, seems capable of making me a better and more grounded person. The tension between these two ways of thinking is real, and I often feel caught between them. Some may see this as indecision, or as an attempt to take the best from both sides. But I see it as a deliberate position: a willingness to remain in uncertainty while searching for a perspective broad enough to hold both reason and the possible transformative power of something beyond it, if such a thing exists.
RJWANG19 
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