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How has your religion affected your choice of career and work life?
- Thread starter libre
- Start date
Short answer is: Yes
an anarchist
Your local loco.
Religiously, I am an anarchist. It may be seen as a political stance, but it is also a spiritual/religious stance for me. I'm not going to get into that I am just going to answer your question.
When I was converting to anarchism, I had recently taken a US military entrance test, the ASVAB. A couple sections I got a perfect score and overall I got a 94 (meaning I did better than 94% of people.). So the Air Force contacted me wanting to put me in officers college. I came from a military family, very patriotic type, they wanted me to serve. But I stuck to my morals and turned down the offer. I'm mentally ill, but I wasn't diagnosed till my 20s, and I would've probably just continued self treating in secrecy if I didn't want to lose my job or eventually gotten medically discharged with a officers college on my resume. But instead, all these years later I work minimum wage side by side with teenagers and disillusioned old people in the restaurant industry.
That is how my religion has affected my career.
When I was converting to anarchism, I had recently taken a US military entrance test, the ASVAB. A couple sections I got a perfect score and overall I got a 94 (meaning I did better than 94% of people.). So the Air Force contacted me wanting to put me in officers college. I came from a military family, very patriotic type, they wanted me to serve. But I stuck to my morals and turned down the offer. I'm mentally ill, but I wasn't diagnosed till my 20s, and I would've probably just continued self treating in secrecy if I didn't want to lose my job or eventually gotten medically discharged with a officers college on my resume. But instead, all these years later I work minimum wage side by side with teenagers and disillusioned old people in the restaurant industry.
That is how my religion has affected my career.
It definitely affected mine. I was in banking and my conscious finally took over. The secondary market was buying 100% ltv product putting huge amounts of money into the industry and practically ruined the industry. I got out, just before the crash and watched what I built fall apart and over 100 employees lost their jobs while I was in the Rockies trying to be retired.
The very thing that caused the global real estate crash is what I was against. My religious philosophy is "maintain personal responsibility". No label, no church, not even a group to claim other than i prefer the moral standards of the old (initial) model of the abrahamic belief system.
I joyed the thread as I felt the applicability.
Secret Chief
Vetted Member
I can't think it has in the way you mean. But my religion is inexorably what I am, and it is that being which has made the choices it has.
Orbit
I'm a planet
When I was a Presbyterian I was interested in all religions. As an undergraduate I chose my major as Anthropology because at the time UCLA’s Comparative Religion department only focused on Abrahamic religions. I wanted to study all religions so I picked Anthropology. Fast forward and as an atheist I now teach Sociology of Religion (not the only thing I teach, but one of my classes).
I don't know if my religion influenced my career.
I think it made me more comfortable in it amidst a culture that sometimes poo-poos the humble domestic engineer.
I think it made me more comfortable in it amidst a culture that sometimes poo-poos the humble domestic engineer.
George Washington
*banned*
Yes, I tend to lead by example, rather than just barking orders all the time. I respect people without needing them to "earn" it beforehand, and I am merciful towards those in lower positions, rather than kissing up to those who hold higher positions than me. What does all this do for "me"? Nothing in my favor! Why? Because I'm the only one doing it!
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I would say the opposite is true for me. My career choice in the sciences has had an impact on my views on religion. Especially in how I interpret the Bible. I haven't interpreted a good deal of it as literal since my late teens.
I felt the need to serve people in some way, (How to accrue good karma, punya, from my religion's perspective.) despite being incredibly shy, and more likely suited to a job where I got to spend long hours alone. (At the time, that would have been taking over the family farm.) That need won out, and I became a teacher. It is an honorable profession of service, if you commit to it.
Half of what led me to nature-centered religion was a deep interest in earth and life sciences. I had ignorantly believed all theism and all religion was stupid because none of it addressed what to me was the most important power of all - the beautiful blue/green orb we live on. Then I discovered Paganism and it was more or less a coming home. My decision to pursue a career in ecology and conservation science was directly related to my religion. What I do now is directly related to my religion. Because religion done proper is who and what you are as well as whose you are. There's no separating me from it.
Being the kind of Hindu that I am, I would never work for alcohol companies, slaughter houses, or any institution that encourages vice. I prefer an industry that is truly beneficial to individuals and the rest of society. In my case, that industry is education. When it comes to choices that I make at work, hardly any of them are influenced by my religion. Other than that, when I do my job, I make it an offering to God who dwells within myself and is omnipresent. This makes me happy to do my job.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
The core of my faith is ethical behavior and making the world a better place.
I remember being very young and having a sit down talk with my youngest brother what we would do with our lives. He, being single, was going to travel the world to human rights hot spots to help out (he met Nelson Mandela even). I, being married, was going to go into teaching and work at inner city schools, since "teaching a man to fish" would give the kids growing up there the best chance they had to get out of poverty.
I eventually burned out on teaching -- too much politics, test preparation eating into teaching time, parents not being supportive, and administration not backing us up on discipline matters just made it into a "you can't pay me enough for this." So then I went back to school and became a counselor. I worked in a rehab center. Again, the idea was to make my job something that was helping the world.
It is unfortunate that the sort of jobs that are of service to humanity are usually the worst paying jobs.
Fine choices. I did not see that far forward. I wanted to be a physicist when it was clear math/science were my best subjects.
I loved defining systems and creating electronic circuitry. Then fishing and surfing became important entertainment while waking up thinking about a variety of scientific questions. Then i realized a bunch of important philosophical concepts and began bridging the queries of life, to science, then digging into the variety of religions. I still love the theologies when focusing on the guidance that many of the flavors offer.
A humility dug in about realizing mankind is within and a part of nature, 'defining itself'. And I am here a part of it.