Do We Need Religion Today?

Take a brief look at the world around you today. Crime and vandalism are rife. Drunkenness abounds on the streets and fights are common. The young seem to have no respect for their elders and their parents appear to allow them to do what they like. Idiot driving pervades our roads and nothing is sacred. The drugs trade is flourishing and hardly a week goes by without somebody being shot through inter-gang warfare.

A very negative start to this article, but hey, that’s the way it is now. In the 1950s in Ireland murder was such a rare occurrence that when it did happen it was headline news for days. Do you remember the Indian medical student who strangled his Irish girlfriend, cut her body up and burnt it? Today murder is so common it is more often relegated to the inner pages.

In the 50s and 60s you could walk any street in Ireland (I’m talking about southern Ireland here) in relative safety. Nobody would harass you and certainly you were in no danger of getting kicked to death by a gang of yobs. Today there are places where most savvy citizens wouldn’t go, especially at night.

Okay, we can say there was institutionalised violence, children were not treated so kindly in many of the orphanages. The Magdalene Laundries cannot hold their heads high and of course the Catholic Church needs to hang it’s head in shame more because it refused to recognise that it had a problem and tried to cover it up. There are paedophiles in every walk of life but because these guys were ordained, it just didn’t do to expose them. While it may be easy for us today to point the finger at the bishops of the time, we cannot judge them on today’s standards. Most Irish Catholics would probably have done the same thing then.

So what has changed? Some point to the rise in violence on television, cinemas, and music. Others point to poverty, bad parenting, lack of discipline in school and the easy availability of drugs. Then the rush to riches during the so called Celtic tiger gave people a feeling that they could now afford whatever they wanted and pay later.

The problem probably lies in some or a combination of the above, however, I doubt television, cinema or music have much to do with it. When Elvis Presley first appeared on the scene, concerned parents and other pillars of society saw the devil in Presley’s music. I wonder what those same people would think if they heard some of the satanic heavy metal around today? Some years ago some parents sued the band Judas Priest because they said their sons had committed suicide while listening to the band’s music and because there were hidden messages in the songs. To complicate matters further some of these were so called back masked messages. In order to hear the message it was necessary to play the record backwards. Another message which was discernible in normal play was the words “Do it”. Of course the first question is do what? Ozzy Osbourne was also sued for his song “Suicide Solution”. However, these kids were long gone down the path of destruction before they even started listening to this music.

So what about television and cinema? Some of today’s films are extremely violent, some just a horrific gore fest. Some of the most gruesome films show in close and excruciating detail every slash of the knife, every cut, enough to churn a hardy stomach. But seriously, do such films make one want to go out and copy the action? I seriously doubt it. It’s fantasy. Horrible maybe, but fantasy nevertheless.

What about poverty and bad parenting? Even in the 50s and 60s in Ireland we had a lot more poverty than today and bad parents too. But it didn’t product a brood of sullen, violent youths prepared to kill. And if anybody says that nobody goes out for a night on the town with the intention to kill another person, why do they bring knives with them?

Lack of discipline occurs in some schools but not all. I have always thought that teaching was a vocation and I believe a lot of teachers should never be allowed near a class of kids. Not for any sinister reasons, but for the simple fact that they cannot teach. I had my fair share of such nincompoops. They drilled poetry into you. They drilled Irish language into you. They drilled religion into you. But what they didn’t do was to teach you how to think for yourself. In my day discipline was relatively easy to keep as they were allowed to give you a few slaps with the leather and it didn’t hurt either. It was a bad decision to take this out of schools and a lot of wayward behaviour today could be stopped in it’s tracks by a good belt. I don’t mean a savage lashing as I witnessed in my day being handed out by a christian (small c on purpose because in this particular rage he was far from being a follower of Christ) brother to one of my schoolmates. He even made the poor guy kneel before him and kiss the ground while the rest of us looked on. Who was going to stand up to this particular thug? But that’s another story. So today we have the do-gooders tut-tutting and sticking all sort of labels on bold kids and then in some cases stuffing them up with drugs. I ask you, what planet are they on? So I guess the lack of discipline, not only in schools, but also in the home itself may be a contributor to our sorry society today. But I still don’t think it’s a major one.

Drugs are certainly one area of deep concern where people can be so coked up they hardly know what they’re doing. Drugs can change personality also. And they weren’t generally available in the 50s (although they were certainly coming on stream in the 60s).

However, I believe the lack of religion is a major cause of the breakdown in society today. Many may find that surprising, but consider the following: lack of spirituality often fosters lack of respect for others as well as oneself. When a person has no respect for others, there is no reason for him to consider the consequences of his actions in relation to other people. Some will point out that there are very good living atheists in society who have no need of religion, but I would contend that committed atheists are generally humanistic and in a sense have a faith in humanity. But when a person has no such faith in anything, he tends towards nihilism and self gratification to the exclusion of others. He has nothing to which to orient himself. No spiritual values, no humanistic values, all of which points towards no values whatsoever. This is a dangerous position for anybody to find themselves in.

Let’s take a brief look at the Jamie Bulger case in Liverpool where a 2 year old child was adducted, tortured and murdered by two 10-year old kids. This is horrendous by anybody’s standards. What made these two do something like this? It wasn’t simply a situation which got out of control and went horribly wrong. No, the violence was systematic and took it’s awful course to death. It appears that these two were brought up in very bad family situations and were basically left to their own devices with no guidance whatsoever. It may be that this is a rare occurrence and you will always get people like this who are totally out of control. After all, they were not the first child killers in Britain. Unfortunately statistics seem to indicate that this type of crime is on the increase.

Another type of crime which is also on the increase around the world is the lone gunman who kills as many people as possible and then turns the gun on himself (or even two gunmen as in the Columbine high school massacre). This is a cold, calculated act of evil. What is going through these guy’s heads as they contemplate such a thing?

I would put forward the opinion, that any child who had been raised in a religious household (with the important caveat that the particular religion was uplifting and not oppressive) or even in a household where the parents held a sincere humanistic view is much more unlikely to act in a manner as discussed above. There is always the exception which proves the rule, of course. But all things being equal, I would hazard the opinion that religion can be good for humanity and society. Naturally the parents need to be good at parenting. It’s no use being brought up in a spiritual environment if your parents ignore you.

Without religion or maybe I should talk about spirituality which is more open and less narrow, people seem to be foundering. Look at the Celtic tiger and what happened to people in Ireland when they suddenly thought they had a lot of money. Banks gave 100% mortgages. Loans were no problem to access. Credit cards seemed like a ticket to spend, spend, spend. One notable thing I noticed was in my day when people got married, they moved (if they were lucky) into an empty house. My house warming had no chairs for my guests to sit on. Over time we accumulated the necessary items. But today (or at least during the boom years) it seems to me, people weren’t content with that. Once they had their house it was full of furniture, televisions, digital players all purchased with a nice piece of plastic or on the never-never. People didn’t seem to know the value of money. They simply lost the run of themselves.

Capitalism continues to push it’s money grabbing ways and forgets about morality. I get sick of hearing managing directors of big companies blather on about how important their employees are to them, how cherished they are and then to make them redundant willy nilly when things get a little rough. Suddenly gone is the concern for their charges and they let them go irrespective of age, mortgage status, financial situation or family commitments. To be fair, there is the odd “good” company out there, but unfortunately few and far between. And how about these rip off merchants who advertise competitions on TV with their small hard to read text and not on the screen long enough? They want you to enter a competition for a trip to New York or some such place and then send stuff to your mobile phone taking a couple of euro every time and continue to do so until you text Stop to them. How many people, especially those not especially technology savvy are being taken to the cleaners by cowboys like these? Unfortunately legal, but highly immoral.

And then of course shops, hotels, among others appear to be able to charge what they want. I’ve seen vast differences between the price of petrol or beer depending where you go. Want to take your family to the cinema or theatre and see what they charge you for popcorn. Captive audience! And what do our flamboyant government ministers have to say about this? The same buys who allowed the banks and builders drive our economy into the ground? Nothing! Shop around! It’s nothing to do with my department! Like the state of our health service, they take no responsibility. And you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s not them or their buddies who will pay for the mess. It’s you and me.

Capitalism and consumerism are trashing traditional values. For example, look at the X-factor television show. Everybody now sings like an American. Different traditions and cultures are something to cherish, not to destroy. TV and the internet are making us all more Americanized with American values, not all bad perhaps but certainly not all good. And to give an idea of the power of TV, when the French stood up over the US going to war with Iraq over nonexistent nuclear weapons what do the American people do? They refuse to buy French products but they didn’t stop to examine their own consciences and ask were their leaders telling them the truth.

So, what do I mean by religion? In fact I would be better speaking about spirituality rather than religion which is just a structured form of spirituality. Some people need this structure while others do not. We don’t necessarily need religion, but we certainly need some sort of spirituality. Something as simple as getting carried away by the beauty of music and art. The ability to be able to sit and contemplate in a forest, on a mountain, by the sea. To look at the stars on a cloud free night and contemplate the majesty of infinity. To be able to sit quietly in a church and simply ponder the mystery of existence. To allow oneself to glimpse, no matter how fleetingly, a sense of something beyond humanity. Beyond our material world with all it’s shortcomings. And this spirituality is far from a claustrophobic, forbidding, oppressive Catholic religion which was particularly abundant in the 50s and 60s under the loveless and austere rule of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid and Taoiseach/President Eamon de Valera. This should be an uplifting of the spirit. It should be about the joy and freedom of being human. Whether or not you believe in a God doesn’t really matter. You can experience this spirituality if you try. Some of the hardliners try to explain it all away as a nasty side effect of evolution, but I would contend that they are wrong. Spirituality is something inherent in all of us. It is like the air we breathe, we need it to enhance our lives. How poor we would be if we could not experience some of the things mentioned above? Some prefer to take it further and allow God into the picture. That’s fair enough and there is plenty of room for him as well. But those God fearing folk should not try to force that view down those who have decided that for them God does not exist. Or are even in ignorance of his existence or otherwise.

And this gift of spirituality should be nurtured starting in the home. It should be encouraged by the school system. We don’t need the type of spirituality where you have wimpy priests or holier-than-thou laypeople going on about relating a football match to your life with Jesus. Or a tedious sermon about the love of God in our lives. What does that mean? No, we need a dynamic religion, one with hope, one with joy. Not a wagging finger saying everything is bad. We need the sort of encouragement which shows us how important it is to be human and especially to allow others to be human too. We have to learn to live in a society which has other people in it, who have rights exactly the same as our own. And we have to appreciate that right in others. If the universe is a cold, dark place, what hope can there be for a caring society? If the universe, on the other hand, has a sense of meaning, this can allow us to be so much more free and caring. A sense of meaning does not necessarily equate to an afterlife, after all many atheists live a full and meaningful life without God, but they mostly have their humanism to hang onto. This humanism which can give them a sense of something else, something greater than themselves. And after all, the mass of humanity is far greater than any one of us.

I hesitate to say that someone who does not experience some sort of inner peace from time to time is doomed to a cruel purposeless existence. Myself, as an agnostic, can look around and see hope in personal family and beyond to the great family all around me. At the end of the day, we are all on this earth together and we will sink or swim together. That in itself can give a great sense of freedom. Of something bigger than me. If there is a God, then so much the better.

I think encouraging this sort of approach to life in our children and in those around us can help make the world a better and more agreeable place to live in. A place where we can share our humanity, our troubles, our weaknesses and strengths and together help to enhance each other’s lives. No matter the colour of skin, race or religion. Go on, give it a try.