The state of religion in the life of a person is a complicated, ever-revolving situation. If three different people, each having a different religion, were asked to define the word "religion," I would almost certainly hear three different definitions, which brings me to the thought of meaning being constructed. Each person has their own unique individual experiences that no other person may have the same exact one. As discussed in class, these experiences are then converted to interpretation, and then these interpretations are institutionalized, which is the process of accepting and rejecting what holds to be valid or misleading. Because of human interpretation, the universe then becomes a meaningful place. Otherwise, we would just be human bodies roaming around with questions marks in our minds lost and finding reasons for our existence and how things function around us.
The thought of meaning being "constructed" has never came across my mind till the discussion held in class. I honestly always thought that meaning might have been given from a source of greater power that passed on his or her words of wisdom to someone else, who then passed it on to other people. Although, the discussion in class did make sense about how meaning is constructed. The process of people going through countless experiences in life, interpreting what they had experience, and then going through the process of institutionalization seems sensible. The only question that ponders in my mind is, how is it proven to be true or false? For example, in Mohammad's situation, he experienced some miracle that no other person had ever experienced. Then from his experiences he gave interpretations of what he was told and from that, he composed a scripture that later was considered the religion, Islam.