Does Religion Still Matter?

Not Just a Boy: The Prophet Jeremiah
August 10, 2014
Is Jesus Worth Following?
September 14, 2014

“Does Religion Still Matter?”
Rev. Dr. David E. Gray
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
September 7, 2014
Philippians 4: 4-7; John 14: 27

Listen to the sermon here.

Over the next few weeks in worship, as we begin fall, we’ll be discussing some key questions of faith.   We won’t hit every issue, but we are hoping to touch many important topics which might be of interest to you.  

This morning to begin with we’ll focus on whether religion still matters.  There is a lot to say on it, but the simple truth is religion does something nothing else can.  It addresses the greatest longings of our hearts.  Let us pray.  Spirit of the living God…..

A little girl asked her mother, “Where did people come from?” Her mother answered, “God made Adam and Eve and they had children and that’s how humankind was made.” A couple of days later she asked her father the same question.  The father answered, “Many years ago there were monkeys, the human race evolved, and here we are.”  The confused little girl returned to her mother and said, “Mommy, you told me that we were created by God, and Daddy said we came from monkeys, which is it?”  The mother answered, “Well, dear, it’s simple. I told you about my side of the family….(I don’t even need to finish the joke) and your father told you about his.”

Human societies have had an age-old tension between science and faith, modernity and tradition, living in the culture and living in the spirit, all in one form or another deriving from and leading to the issue of the role of religion in people’s lives.[i]   

Now, more and more Americans are turning away from formal religion in their lives.  Even as our congregation grows, as a result of demographics and internal debates on social issues, our denomination, the PCUSA, has lost 10% of its membership over past two years, though many to other denominations.   There is a crisis of young people nationally, causing many to wonder if the habit of going to church is fading away.  The Pew Center finds that the fastest growing segment of “belief” among Americans are the “nones,” those with no religious affiliation, especially among youth people who don’t affiliate with any religious group.  As participation in many religious institutions in America declines and technological sophistication expands, many people find themselves more isolated and alienated from others.  David Brooks of the New York Times observed that these days “individuals don’t live embedded in tight social orders; they live in buffered worlds of private choices.”[ii]

Religion is under attack from best-selling scholars such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens who argue against the existence of God; from thought leaders who suggest that science is incompatible with religion; from those who argue that we don’t need religion because science can explain all that is important in the world.

Some observant citizens have concluded that religion does more harm than good.  We look around the world these days and religion seems to be at the heart of some of the great conflicts in the world, whether between Sunni and Shia in Iraq, between Jews or Palestinians in Gaza or between Muslims and Christians in the Fertile Crescent.  A senior military advisor at the Pentagon told me recently, “There is no good news in the world.”

In the midst of all these challenges, does religion still matter?  We have enough going on with sports practices and work demands and other activities to keep us busy.  Why bother with faith?  Well, religion has faced challenges before and more than survived.  Israel has seen its temple destroyed and has endured multiple periods of exile.  Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism have faced internal conflict.  Christianity was forged out of persecution, went through reformations and survived the challenges of division.

Christianity is never been threatened by a lack of public approval.  It’s interesting that our Bible never argues for the existence of God.  The Bible sees no need to convince anyone.  Life is challenging and beautiful and finite.  It is intricate and complex.  And underneath it all, the Bible implies and assumes an innate human longing for faith. 

Jesus said, “I do not give to you as the world gives.”  While the world gives a harried busyness, God offers us peace.  But as Paul concluded, it is a peace which “surpasses all understanding.”   Paul was a know-it-all but much of his life.  It was only when he stopped trying to explain life through the head and gave into the longings of his heart for the mysterious ways of God, that he found peace.

John Paul Sartre suggested that there is no reason for our existing if there is no God.  Famous religion scholar Huston Smith explains that all of us have a religious impulse.  At some level we all hunger for something “more” outside of our everyday experience.  That impulse suggests to Smith that this “more” exists, much the same way that “the wings of birds point to the reality of air.”  Smith concludes that “Having been created in the . . . image of God, all people have a God-shaped vacuum built into their hearts.”[iii]

St. Augustine tried to experience satisfaction through the things of the world and finally concluded that our “hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.”

NYU’s Jonathan Haidt gave a TED talk in 2012 in which he used the metaphor of our desiring to open a door and walk up a staircase of self-transcendence to describe the human desire for some greater intelligence. 

I believe that humans are hard wired to search for our creator and while that search takes on many forms for many different people, the thirst for the living God which the author of Psalm 42 wrote about and our choir will sing about as our offertory is real for each of us.  There is a longing in the human soul for something greater than us, more than our mortal lives, for more meaning.  And that meaning, that satisfaction, that peace, only comes when the God-shaped vacuum in our hearts is filled by God.  Religion matters because by our worshiping, serving and gathering in community around our faith religions helps fills that vacuum, that longing, the panting, the thirst, we all have in a way which nothing else can.

Religion provides us with aspiration, identify, learning, opportunity and responsibility.   David Larson of Duke University Schools of Medicine found in his research that the relationship between religious practice and personal well-being is powerful and positive.  Researcher Pat Fagan surveyed a large amount of social science research and concludes that “Church attendance is one of the most important predictors of marital stability and happiness.  It can help repair damage caused by alcoholism and drug addiction.   That regular religious practice increases longevity, improves one’s chances of recovery from illness, and lessens the incidence of many diseases.”[iv]

Religion matters because even though church attendance is challenged, a majority of Americans pray regularly.   The Pew Research Center points out that even among those who call themselves agnostics or atheists, 12 percent still pray daily.  Even people who are not religious are seeing benefits from religious actions.

Michelle Boorstein wrote in the Washington Post a year ago in June that, “Each morning and night, Sigfried Gold drops to his knees on the carpeting of his bedroom, lowers his forehead to the floor and prays to God.  An atheist, Gold took up prayer out of desperation. Overweight by 110 pounds and depressed, the 45-year-old software designer saw himself drifting from his wife and young son.  He joined a 12-step program for food addiction that required — as many 12-step programs do — a recognition of God and prayer.  Four years later, Gold is trim, far happier in his relationships and free of a lifelong angst. Gold credits a rigorous prayer routine morning, night and before each meal — to a God he doesn’t really believe exists….. 

Gold says that when you pray, there is a humility, a surrender, an openness. You’re saying you can’t do it by yourself.  While Gold doesn’t believe there is some supernatural being out, he describes himself as having had a “conversion” that can be characterized only as a “miracle.” His life has been mysteriously transformed, he says, by the power of asking….

Paul Fidalgo, a spokesman for the secular advocacy group the Center for Inquiry, concludes. “There is a big hole in many atheist’s life,” and “Some atheists are saying, ‘Let’s fill it.”[v]

While formal religion faces challenges, don’t tell me there isn’t an innate human longing for God.  God offers to fill our vacuum with God’s peace.  However, as Paul explains, it is a peace which surpasses understanding.  The meaning that religion provides is one which cannot be fully explained by the tools we humans possess.

Human science tells us the universe began around fifteen billion years ago with an incredibly bright flash of energy from an incredibly small point.   That the universe had a beginning implies that something or someone was able to begin it.  It wasn’t likely to create itself.  John Gafney pointed out to me at Men’s Fellowship last Spring that Francis Collins, the director of NIH here in Bethesda and director of the human Genome project writes that there are fifteen constants in the universe, such as gravity.  If any one of those constants was off by even one part in a million, the universe could not have actually come to the point where we are here.  It is set up precisely to allow for human life.

Huston Smith suggested that “If we make science, not Spirit, the ultimate source of knowledge and meaning, we severely limit the knowledge and meaning available to us. Where do we come from? Why are we here? What happens to us after death? How can we be our best in the meantime? Science doesn’t fully address the big picture questions of life, much less answer them.”[vi]

Religion matters because it can help explain what science cannot.  Science can explain the how of life, but it cannot explain the why.   It can tell us how things evolve but not why we are here.  It can help you understand the changes in your body but not help you make peace with your eventual death.  It can provide a framework for understanding the physical world but not give you meaning in life as religion can.  And even if we don’t have all the answers, especially when we don’t, it’s ok.  Because God does and we can find peace in that.

Philosophers will argue that the presence of evil in the world shows that God is either indifferent or incapable of ruling the universe.  There is the problem of evil.   There is also the presence of good. 

One of my favorite movie quotes is Samwise Gamgee at the end of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, after much travel and battle and heartache, heroes Frodo and Sam find themselves in the shadow of a desolate city and Sam says, “By rights we shouldn’t even be here, but we are…It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end…  Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turnin’ back only they didn’t. They kept goin’ because they were holding on to something.  Frodo, asks, “What are we holding onto Sam?”  Sam picks up Frodo holding his hands and answers, “That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”[vii]

If religion does not matter, if everything is a matter of competition and survival on the food chain, why are there so many people doing good deeds in the world for others?  Why do we fund a hospital raising money for children hurt in war in the Middle East?   Why do our members Nancy Brown or Herminie MGobol go to South Sudan to help governments and people’s pick themselves us?  Why do doctors go into Hot Zones to combat Ebola?  Why do parents help a stranger’s child off a school bus?  Why do we grieve when we lose a loved one?  Yes there is good news in the world.

As a church we said “see you later” to Betty Hansen last Friday.  Many of you shared feelings about how her life touched you.  Only something deep and special can touch us in such ways.  Betty lived her life as an educator.  That is how I saw her.  As a teacher.  To me and to others.  She taught Sunday school, she shared with me once, because she felt it was important to pass on the stories and connections and prayers so that the next generation would benefit from religion as much as she did.  Because there will come a time in the life of every young person when they will be tried and tested, when they will face darkness and danger.  And they should receive the consolation and value and hope which only faith can give.

Religion is certainly not the only source of good in the world.  We can have fulfilling lives by ourselves.  But throughout history, religion has been uniquely successful in inspiring people to care about the common good, and things outside of themselves.  Ideals that help them reach up to the heavens.  Ideas that help them fill their God shaped vacuum and find peace within. 

As we grow older, we realize that few things give us more meaning and provide more purpose or peace, than does religion.

Religion matters because it helps motivate us, heal us and explain some of the mysteries in a way which nothing else in the universe can.

But more than that, it can help give us peace when faced with the questions and situations which we cannot answer or understand.

You might be here this morning and don’t believe in God.  Or are not sure what to believe about religion.  That is ok.  You are here.  Let us walk the journey with you.  Because we all have something to learn together.   Let us together tap into the electricity which only comes from seeking God’s mysterious way.  May it be so.  Amen. 


[i] William James.  Varieties of Religion Experience.  1902.

[ii] David Brooks. “The Secular Society.” New York Times. July 8, 2013.

[iii] Huston Smith.  Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief.  2006.

[iv] http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1996/01/bg1064nbsp-why-religion-matters.

[v] http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/non-believers-say-their-prayers-to-no-one/2013/06/24/b7c8cf50-d915-11e2-a9f2-42ee3912ae0e_story.html.

[vi] Huston Smith.  Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief.  2006.

[vii] Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.  J.R. Tolkien.