I am what is called a third culture kid of sorts, who are by wikipedia’s definition, people raised in a culture other than their parents’ or the culture of their country or nationality, and also living in a different environment during a significant part of their childhood development years. Specifically in my case, I’ve always been having to move between countries and places within those countries on average every one and a half years. So, in terms of childhood development, I should have definitely picked up some patterns of human nature so that I can become a participant in it, or did I?
I moved to Cyprus right when I was born and had a disjointed experience between the nursery I was put in and then an English education school the nursery didn’t feed to; within two schools in India based on where and when we were renting a place before buying one in a different place; and then in the United States the same issue happened, as I attended two different schools. Furthermore, the district prevented me from going to the high school that my middle school correspondingly fed to the most, sending me to the sparsely related one. I went to a college most of my friends didn’t go to and then the Coronavirus sent me back home forcing another discontinuity in my life before I came back to college again.
During these times, I walked through several different faiths. In Cyprus, it was a potluck of many faiths since it was a sort of tourist country. Although the school was sponsored by Christian stakeholders, the student body wasn’t short of its Muslim influence being surrounded by Syria, Turkey, Egypt, etc. as well as its Judeo-influence with Israel right around the corner. In India, my second school was a largely Hindu-sponsored school with most students of Hindu descent though some of Sikh and Muslim descent. The United States was subject to separation of Church and State so it was a little hard to uncover what institutional system was driving the machines underneath people.
It wasn’t until college that I got to clearly see the difference between where people and their faith’s priorities put them to see what really drives them. Prior to this, it seemed as if these people lived a sort of innocent life, within naivety, and individuality, to spread themselves out, explore and learn. It started to seem like college started to bring a necessity that made them realize there was a human world outside of this picturesque divine world I am painting them within—to balance what is beyond them and within them and their choice. Separated from their parents, it seemed like they had to take a bite of the apple, falling, and really having to decide for themselves what to do.
The thing with my life was that it seemed ordinary to have a different experience every couple of years. The problem with this is a lack of depth and I began recently to contrast this with what I have begun noticing in some others: a deep Christian life that their parents tried to inculcate in them as children, and this implicit collected character that builds out of this formation. I observed that even though there may be a difference in whether a child eventually makes the choice themself to continue with Christianity or not, many of them had a very interesting sense of continuity.
In one sense, Christians in the U.S. have a strong continuity as they were among the first colonists to settle the United States and made it the dominant faith of the land. They erected educational institutions to support the Christian enterprise in the new land. They then fed into the economy to support the welfare of their state. To support their families, they had children to populate the education, economy, and ultimately the widespread ethic for the American state. It was so deeply ingrained in the land and instrumental for so many components to eventually compose what it would become to be today’s United States. So, today, even if children didn’t decide to choose Christianity, they were still subject to strong forces between their parents and the institutions surrounding them founded under the Christian enterprise.
This is what I’ve observed living here, and in the next companioning post I will further discuss my own philosophy of place and religion.