Why “Americans haven’t found a satisfying alternative to religion”
“Credentialed experts, especially those in the fields of epidemiology and public health . . . tied themselves to badly flawed theories, closed their minds to new evidence, and [threw] the mantle of ‘science’ over value judgments for which they had no special competence.” This is how a recent Wall Street Journal article describes the official response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The article reviews two new books on the subject. An Abundance of Caution by journalist David Zweig reports that evidence in March 2020 showed the virus did not pose a serious threat to children, but American public health professionals “remained largely impervious to this fact,” leading to widespread school closures and disastrous consequences.
The other book, In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us, by two Princeton political scientists, adds that “elite institutions failed us” by giving in to panic. According to the Journal, they report a “willful suppression of reasonable debate, including the unfortunate tendency to paint critics of lockdowns and mask mandates as racists, quacks, and conspiracy theorists.”
When our water heater stopped working
It’s often necessary for us to trust people whose expertise surpasses our own in the hope they will do what we cannot.
When the water heater in our house stopped working over the weekend, I tried to fix it myself but soon gave up and called the plumber. The days when we could repair our cars and homes are long gone for most of us. We need experts who know what we do not know.
But what is true of mechanical technology is not true of biblical Christianity. Tragically, many people do not know this.
This New York Times article caught my eye: “Americans Haven’t Found a Satisfying Alternative to Religion.” The journalist Lauren Jackson attributes the escalation of secularism in recent years largely to Richard Dawkins and other champions of “new atheism,” so-called “experts” who assured us that Christianity is outdated, irrelevant, and even dangerous to society.
According to Jackson, “an immense social transformation” followed. And the results?
She reports that “people are unhappier than they’ve ever been and the country is in an epidemic of loneliness.” She adds that “those without religious affiliation in particular rank lower on key metrics of well-being. They feel less connected to others, less spiritually at peace, and they experience less awe and gratitude regularly.”
What explains this?
Religion provides the “three B’s”
Jackson cites sociologists who say religion provides the “three B’s”: belief, belonging, and behaviors. Its beliefs supply answers to the hard questions of life; it gives people a place to belong; and it tells us how to behave. All three speak to deep needs in human experience.
As a result, Jackson notes Pew findings that actively religious people tend to say they are happier than irreligious people. We are healthier and significantly less likely to be depressed or to die by suicide, alcoholism, cancer, cardiovascular illness, or other causes.
A long-term Harvard study found that women who attended religious services once a week were 33 percent less likely to die prematurely than women who never attended. An author of the study explained: “They had higher levels of social support, better health behaviors, and greater optimism about the future.”
In addition, religiously affiliated Americans are more likely than irreligious people to feel gratitude (by 23 percentage points), spiritual peace (by 27 points), and “a deep sense of connection with humanity” (by 15 points). Since positive relationships have been proven to be the single most important predictor of well-being, these differences are especially significant.
Jackson’s reporting is obviously good news, showing that the “experts” who rejected religion as irrelevant and dangerous were wrong on the merits. But there is an even more important fact her article omits.
When “your faith is in vain”
Paul testified, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). However, “in fact Christ has been raised from the dead” (v. 20). As a result, God “gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 57) and we are “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).
The living Lord Jesus now prays for us (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25), forgives every sin we confess to him (Romans 8:1; 1 John 1:9), heals us (cf. Acts 3:6), meets us in our most difficult places (cf. Revelation 1:9–20), and gives us eternal life in this world and the next (John 3:16; 14:3).
The benefits of religion cited in the Times article—belief, belonging, behaviors, gratitude, peace, and a “deep sense of connection with humanity”—are most fully experienced as the consequences of a daily, intimate relationship with him.
The good news is that all of this is as available to you and me on this Tuesday after Easter as it was on the first Easter twenty centuries ago.
“We are people of the spring”
The Vatican announced today that the coffin carrying the body of Pope Francis will be carried to St. Peter’s Basilica tomorrow. His funeral Mass will take place Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square. (For more on the pope’s passing, see my Daily Article and website article from yesterday.)
But Francis would want us to look forward, not backward, demonstrating our faith in the God who wants only our best. In his latest book, published just two months before his death, the pontiff describes the hope at the heart of the Christian faith:
We believe that resting on the horizon of life is a sun that shines forever. We believe that our most beautiful days are yet to come. We are people of the spring, as opposed to autumn. . . .
A Christian knows that the kingdom of God, the dominion of Love, grows like a vast field of wheat, and that it may well have weeds in its midst. There are always problems: people gossip, there are wars, there is illness . . . But even so, the wheat ripens, and in the end, evil will be eliminated.
We know that the future does not belong to us. We know that Jesus Christ is life’s greatest grace. We know that God’s warm embrace not only awaits us at life’s end but also accompanies us on our journey every day.
The more we embrace the God who embraces us, the more we step past a religion about God into a vital relationship with the living Lord Jesus, and the more others are drawn to “life’s greatest grace.”
Do you believe that your “most beautiful days are yet to come”?
Quote for the day:
“We are all unique, free and alive, called on to live out a love story with God.” —Pope Francis
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