Why people find religion

[sanctus]

That may be YOUR experience but thats not the facts. ts.

So everyone else just has an opinion, and only you and you alone have the facts?? And you speak about the judgemental, self-focused nature of the Church??? hmmmm.

 

[sanctus]

This is my theory as to why people turn to religion. From what I've observed, allot of people turn to Christianity because they've hit rock bottom in their lives. My Dad used to try to take me to church and most people I saw there were ex drug users, or out of work. This seems so phony to me. You shouldn't go to church because you hope God will make your life better, and the only reason your there is because you have no where else to turn.
Sometimes people who are ill want to be cured. You see this on TV. A preacher, preying on the desperate, "heals" these sick people with the power of the Lord. I am sure that if there is a hell these preachers are going there.
Another reason people find religion is because they've been harassed by religious crusaders. Why do these religious types have to "spread the word"?
And finally, people turn to religion because they honestly believe it's the answer. This should be the only reason.
What other reasons are there? There must be millions.

You're not off on your evaluation by much! Many people find Christ and His Church after hitting the lowest point of their lives. Maybe that is necessary for some, in other words, to be stripped of self enough to let God work in their lives. From that vantage point they begin to sense they need a spiritual life. Perhaps this is the answer for them, and for those you claim join the Church for this reason alone. There are as many stories of why people believe as there are sands on a beach. What is important, I think, is not why they joined, but what they do with themselves after joining.

 

[sanctus]

Some do judge, but if you judge them then you become what you hate about them. It's a fine balance. It gets me angry too when people judge others for their beliefs and Christians tend to do this most. But from what I've learned about religion, judgment is frowned upon. So why do they judge? The bible says you shouldn't judge, or kill. Yet many religious types where glad when Saddam Hussein was judged by a kangaroo court and then hung. Many religious types are in favor of the death penalty. Why? Why do they judge gay people? Isn't final judgment left for God?

They shouldn't be judging anybody, as you noted. However, in saying this remember that they also have to adhere to the doctrines or standards of belief of the teachings of the Church, if that is what they believe. In that sense, it is permissable to know which behaviours are considered wrong, or immoral. It is the behaviour that should be "judged", not the people. Even so, even in determining homosexual behaviour to be wrong, still the teaching of Christ is very clear that this is not to be a judgement of the people behaving in a homosexual fashion.

 

[darleneonfire]

.... I joined a forum title Canadian Content.... so I kind of assumed that most conversations are within that context. Perhaps you're accessing these threads from a forum titled American content, I have no idea.

Funny you should write that Karrie! You are echoing my own thoughts. I was just beginning to think the same thing. We seem to get allot of American POV here, as if we do not already get enough from the media! They seem to think their experiences are substantially better or more relevant than ours, I suppose.

To the topic, you missed an important element to why people join religions, namely birth. Many of us are born and raised in our denominations, so as adults, when we decide to "do church" we go back to those same denominations. For myself as an Anglican, I really only started to go to church on a regular basis after we had our first son. I wanted to raise my kids in the Church and felt it would be hypocritical to send them without my husband and I being equally involved.

When we left the Anglican Communion for the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, we naturally took the kids along with us. My oldest two go once in a blue moon now, but my youngest two, 13 and 15 are required. In my house, there are no exceptions, the kids must go to church until they are 16. After that I leave it up to them. My youngest is an altar server and is quite involved actually.My other three, well they go, as I said the older two when they feel like it and the other one I suspect because we make him.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. --H. L. Mencken

I'm not quite the curmudgeon Mencken was, but there's much truth in that remark. I think it's true that people find a religion largely by a process akin to osmosis. Whatever religion your parents practice just sort of seeps into you. Most people don't think about it very deeply or clearly, they just accept it as part of the context of their lives without really examining it very closely or critically.

But I think the OP wanted to go deeper than that. Religion I think speaks to something that's deeply true about human nature. I'm not sure how to characterize it briefly; no less an intellect than Carl Sagan took a whole book* to do it. The first religions, in our hunter-gatherer days, were almost certainly animist, and reflect the human need to find patterns in and explanations for otherwise incomprehensible things. That's certainly still one of the functions of religion. It also provides a certain moral authority and promotes social cohesion and continuity. And it provides ritual, rites of passage, music, poetry...

No simple answer though. I must think further on this.


*The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, edited by his widow Ann Druyan, based on Sagan's 1985 Gifford Lectures, ISBN 1-59420-107-2. Highly recommended.

 

[MikeyDB]

People find religion as a safe place to lay responsibility for their own terrible lack of good judgment and preparedness to scam, steal, cheat, pilliage and rape, be-head, castrate (both figuratively and literally), lie to themselves and permission to be excused..because they aren't after all responsible for anything....