People who have been raped, had a family member murdered, things like that, do you think they can truly find relief if they truly believe in God? Will doubling their prayers reduce their pain by half? I ask this because a religious person I know told me of some very very sad and tragic things that happened to them. Will more religion help them???
I’m quite certain that religion has helped many people through tragedies. However, I’m equally certain that no belief could be strong enough for others.
Don’t forget that many people of faith belong to a community of believers, which serves as a support group above and beyond their beliefs.
But none of this should be confused with clinical depression, which is a biochemical condition.
Not being a believer, I’d leave it to someone who believes to answer.
But what I can most certainly say is that the physical pain religion has caused overwhelmingly outweighs the “psychological healing” it might have helped with.
Well, Jack Chick seems to think so. It’s a common theme in his publications.
Here’s an old but entertaining one. The Mad Machine. (Scroll down a bit; the entire text is there.) Elderly widow, with cancer, nearly broke, finds comfort in Jesus.
I am currently in grief support group that meets at a church - everyone except me and maybe one other person is religious. Many talk about the relief they feel “knowing” they will see their loved ones again. I believe they believe this. I think it does give them some comfort - as does letting Christ guide their life.
I don’t think it is a huge difference, but I suspect if you were to ask 100 people in my position how happy they were and 100 people in theirs - they would score on average higher. I suspect if you were to ask someone who had met them - and didn’t know their religion, but based off facial expressions and the like - they would score closer to those that were athiests - rather than based on self reports.
I don’t have the figures handy, but belief in religion does in general make people happier. This might be supplanted by something like “belief in something bigger than yourself”.
To me - I’m not even sure if the question is the correct one to ask. I can’t become a believer. I mean I guess I could try and fake it, but I’m pretty sure if there was an all knowing God he’d pick up on that.
I can say even though most are very religious - they are still very devastated - of course I am self selecting from a group of people that feels they need grief support.
Religion also causes tragedies. Terrorists are usually motivated by religion.
The actual answer to the OP is of course. When tragedy befalls a fervently religious person, how does that person typically react? Well, to find some sort of meaning or purpose from God for it. It’s all just a coping mechanism.
I really doubt it does so in cases where the psychological trauma is being caused by the religion. Some teenager cast out of their home to live on the streets because they are gay isn’t likely to be comforted by the same religion that inspired their parents to reject them.
Sure, people can find comfort in religion. Also in their hobbies, their jobs, their relationships… really whatever’s handy when they go through the healing process. Heck, some people react to psychological trauma by turning into hoarders, finding solace in stuff.
Sure it does. But so does ice cream, talking to a good friend, losing oneself in other activities, and just plain time.
It depends on the healer as much as on the sufferer.
Confession covers many of the needs Western society now covers with therapists. Same as you can get a therapist that helps you solve your problems or one who makes them worse (without even getting into actual malpractice, just a bad fit), you can get a confessor who helps you solve your problems or one who makes them worse (without even getting into actual malpractice, just a bad fit).
Having one of the priests at my parish tell me that what my mother was doing to me was abuse and that “thou shalt not kill” includes “thou shalt not let thine mother smother thee to death” came in helpful. Would it have come in helpful from someone else? Depending on who the person was, yes. But most other people wouldn’t have been in a position to tell me that, he was (in that case, it was the priest who initiated the conversation). Praying more wouldn’t have helped any, mind you.
Psychologically, anything that focuses a person’s mind can be helpful. He can be a worshipper of mayonnaise and its gooey sourhood or believe that left handed gloves hold the key to happiness. A human’s brain can be fooled in a lot of ways, religion is just a preferred tool
Religion helps those who are inclined to be helped by religion. If you aren’t so inclined, it is likely to be pretty useless to you.
The same goes for pretty much everything, though. Some people are helped by psychotherapy. Some people are helped by psychopharmacy. Some people are helped by self-help books and motivational speakers. Some people are helped by just staying busy and surrounding themselves with family and friends.
There is no single trick to coping with human suffering. Anyone who says so is very ignorant.
I believe that religion is (among other things) largely a set of metaphors that help to articulate the things in life that are almost impossible to put in to words- things like death, love, consciousness and time.
As such, I’m sure it is useful for dealing with psychological pain. It gives a framework and vocabularly for understanding these difficult, abstract concepts. It’s not the only way, but it’s one way.
At my aunt’s funeral last week I watched a whole crowd of people come together through religion so yes, religion absolutely helps people work through their loss. The stories the preacher told about the afterlife and her place in it were reassuring to everyone, even an old non-believer like myself. Of course, when he slipped into the long sermon about how non-believers will never see her again, will suffer for ever in burning fire and even talking to us is a danger to a real Christians immortal soul, I kinda lost some of the good feelings I had. But the believers were assured that rest of us would get our just punishment, so that must be comforting to them.
I just had a religious friend tell me she hopes to see her loved ones again. That is clearly part of it for some people. I think for others it’s the idea of forgiveness. People who may be burdened by guilt over previous acts. I also think the idea of god allows people to feel they are part of so something bigger and has meaning and purpose. I know people who have been addicts or have had other past problems can find some healing in these concepts.
Yes you certainly can say that but it’s just an opinion not a demonstrable or measure able fact.
Oh, GAWWWD! One of his worst ever! The whole field of Mental Health is reduced to sedatives thrown at you, group therapy that does more harm than good, and so on. Sin? How silly. “… Blame it on your mother.”
The irony here is that blaming mothers certainly looks like abdicating responsibility. Uh huh. But the woman at the end who has “found Jesus” also seems to take absolutely no responsibility for tangible steps to alleviate some of her problems. And since she no doubt scorns the useless tools of therapy, should she not also eschew any medical treatments that might help?
I think that’s one of the main reasons religion was invented. As a man-made coping mechanism. Especially in previous eras when loss was so prevalent due to war, lawlessness, disease, famine, etc. How would one cope with loss of their entire family being wiped out by something seeming so unfair? Simple, make up stories about a heaven, a god, reasons we just don’t understand. Why you’ll be reunited with them later, how those that did you wrong will get theirs in hell, blah, blah, blah.
When you’ve lost everything and can’t make any sense of anything these man-imagined stories become the only thing to cling to without losing your mind or becoming suicidal.