Exploring the Connection Between Language and Religion: Discovering Satanism as a Non-Native English Speaker

I feel profound connections between religion, culture, and language. Before writing about my connection with Satanism, I'm going to describe the personality of English as I feel as a non-native speaker first. For example, I think there are grammatical forms and words that fit the situation in traditional religious communities. "He allows us to do it", "My belief has kept me from the danger of the temptation", "I'm destined to care for others, which is my calling", and so on. As Christianity has dominated Western societies, the religion and its customs are ingrained in English grammatically and vocabularily. I was surprised by how natural and comfortable their speech was when I watched the movie The First Omen. It was simple and optimized as if its language was born for people in the Christian orphanage. 

It cannot be more adequate to start the second paragraph with this famous quote: "Satan has certainly been the best friend the church has ever had" by our uncle Anton LaVey. Satanism is so cultural. It ironically reflects the most fundamental mindset of Christianity and changes it into a modern and rational philosophy with its dark aesthetics. Being the greatest critic, its words resemble Western societies' most favorable spiritual anchor yet use them to shine their shadow it has ever missed. "Blasphemous", "sanctimonious", "unctuous", "impious", and "adversarial", those words weren't something I had ever heard in my native language and opened my eyes to understand the underlying maps beneath easily noticeable elements on the surface culture.

It definitely has affected my thoughts and shaped a part of my identity. Adding related words to my dictionary, I found the context of Satanism was quite helpful in embracing my emotions and interpreting my life as an outsider. Even though my home country is located far away from the places where the religion has ruled, adversarial representations have more made sense to me who has struggled to be a misfit in primary in-groups. Those seemingly high-contextual styles to describe Satanism in English weirdly fit me(it was something like the YouTube Algorithm or YouTube recommendation). As it resonated with me, each word was coming alive and given its personal context.

My story is that having a new religion while learning the lingua franca can be pretty unlikely for someone. Most people in this world are learning their second language for their school mandatory or their monetary incentives. But let's think about it. Religion, culture, and language, those three things are highly relatable and have huge overlaps. Language learners should immerse themselves into the culture of the language they learn and the culture evolves with their religion. Seemingly improbable, however, it totally makes sense.