Beyond Our Differences

The goal of the documentary, Beyond Our Differences, was to give people the message to treat people as equals, live life fully, and work towards the common good. The film portrayed this message mainly through real life examples of religion, race and gender and how faith can help improve the problems. These three topics are relatable since they have caused controversy and conflicts in today’s society. I believe the film did a successful job getting the message across with the way they presented the subjects. The film would begin explaining one of the topics of religion, race or gender by showing the causes and effects of an epidemic or problem related to one of the topics. Then, it showed how faith would be able to solve this problem and then give the message of even though people have different skin, race or gender they are still humans and very similar. I believe the film was successful mainly because of the way they presented the problems in society and the valuable lessons we can learn from each one.

The one that stuck out to me was at the beginning, the lady was explaining how religion is a quest for meaning. In class we talked about many different definitions of religion, but this definition made me think differently and I agreed with it. The people in the film talked about important values such as commitment, helping the poor, love, forgiveness, and compassion. All of these values were things I touched on in my Credo Assignment. The variations in definition and values that were talked about in the film show that even though all religions are different, they all are similar to each other in their own ways. Religion is special because a person can believe in a different religion and have a different definition as someone, but still share the peace, stability, free will, and the same core