When I read first chapter of Religion: the social context, where it talks about defining term “religion”, I could not think about any definition of religion. Honestly, although I have learned about religion for little bit, I still couldn’t state what religion is/does clearly. Maybe it’s because religion does not affects me in the way it does to believers.
But when I read second chapter it kinda started to be little bit clear. Religion helps to make sense of everyday life and events by “meaning system”, which Berger explains that it “explains why things are way they are and prescribes how it should be”(28). The example of losing job was really easy to understand for me. The event in life, such as losing job, happens, and person wants reason for that even that reason doesn’t give hope to him/her. For event such as losing job, it is easier to make sense out of it; it could be bad luck, market force, not enough work, or boss was mean person…etc. But the reason also could be God will or order for those who use religion’s viewpoint to interpret meaning of this event. People have desire to know the meaning of what they are going through because with reason it is easier to figure out appropriate course of action(32). And to find a meaning of the events, seeing through religion’s worldview can help.
As I said in the class, I don’t have any specific religion I believe although I assume some of ideas affects my way of thinking and meaning system. For me, honestly, it uses to be little bit hard to understand why people believe in religion since it is not familiar thing for me. But as a way of life, to make sense and give meaning to life events, religious people use religion’s worldview, just like I use my view to interpret my event in my point of view. It’s just difference of what group’s worldview that person decided to apply to the life events.