The Cycle Continues...

Regarding the article Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look by Gregory S. Paul:

There is much to ponder in a study by Gregory Paul in the Journal of Religion and Society with the catchy title “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look”. The paper correlates statistics from western developed countries related to religiosity and social wellness....

I pose my hypothesis, in the absence of data to prove it one way or another, that it is neither and both. High murder, mortality, suicide, teen pregnancy and STD transmission rates produce fear. Fear can produce a particular type of religious belief, which reacts to fear in a way that makes the situation worse. Celebrating gun ownership in the face of crime, or pushing abstinence-only sex education in the face of teen pregnancy, fuels the social ills they are meant to stop. Fear of the secular world, including the government, precludes reasonable governmental solutions to these problems. As a result, the social ills grow, the fear increases, and the cycle continues.

The answer is to abandon fear. When we stop being afraid, we are free to love, even to love the murderer and the adulterer. When we stop being afraid, we find the courage to be.

O’Brien says that functional societies run on trust, and I agree. To which I would add that functional religions run on love.

[via I am a Christian Too]