"Unaware of Social Construction of Reality—From Birth"

From birth we tend to think that the new baby comes into the world with a clean slate, one that has the capacity to draw upon it any story that can be imagined. But we as human beings are creatures of habit. The fact that these habits are so well ingrained in society that when a child is born—for the most part these ingrained habits are not recognized as habits. They are accepted as reality. Though each person possesses their own unique set of attitudes, beliefs, and opinions, these were formed on the basis of and drawn from a well that had already been filled by our ancestors, history, and media. One of the most powerful influencers in our social construction of reality that may be even more powerful than our family is the media. By media I do not just mean television, movies, music, the Internet, and radio. I am referring mainly to the historical interpretation of the bible and other important literature. The messages that are produced by the media, of all forms, interacts with the humans already existing knowledge and a socially agreed upon reality is formed.

This socialization process goes on in every society and culture. Socialization is important in the process of personality formation. This is done in order for successful socialization to occur. This then results in uniformity within a society. Which develops into what are called norms. These norms are the conceptions of appropriate and expected behavior that are held by most members of the society. These social facts come into existence through human construction.

One example of this is, Shiite Muslim men in Iran ritually beating themselves bloody with hands and chains as an act of religious faith commemorating the death of Imam Hussein in 680 a.d.

"Suspicions Confirmed"

My suspicions were confirmed recently as to why so many churches and people in churches are having the same problems that people not in church have. I was recently talking to a pastor, we were discussing our professions. He was telling me how after years of being a pastor he hit a brick wall, he reached a "burn-out" point. He realized that the reason that this happened was because of some issues that he had not resolved in his past.

In my profession as a faith-based counselor, I understand that unresolved issues carry over into our professional as well as personal lives. While in Seminary classes, I was taught that your unresolved issues will be transferred to your clients. So it is important to first of all recognized that you do have issues and to get them resolved before you begin helping others.

In the case of the pastor, when he hit the brick wall, that is when he started his journey to resolving his issues. His main issue was that when it came right down to it, "He did not believe that God would be there for him." This has always been a suspicion of mine about Christians in general. I reached that conclusion about a year ago, when I started my journey towards my destiny of starting a non-profit and becoming a faith-based or "Christian Counselor". I realized that the reason so many Christians have so many problems, is because they do not believe what they profess to believe. The majority of Christians read the Bible as if it were a mere history book about an ancient civilization. The connection that they have with God is through a pastor or minister. And that is where the problem begins. Because if you have pastors and ministers who do not fully understand God's purpose for them and believe that He is able to do what He says He can do, that "issue" of doubt and unbelief will carry over into the ministry. And that group of people which are under that pastor will be exposed to the same "issue" as the pastor and will not be able to grow and experience God as was intended. Therefore you will have a lot of Christians having all of the same problems that non-Christians or non-faith people are having.