Good News on the Faith Front

Christopher Green commenting on an article by Lauren Jackson for the New York Times titled “Americans Haven’t Found a Satisfying Alternative to Religion” provides some good news on the endurance and importance of Faith.

Jackson reports that 92 percent of Americans say, “They hold a spiritual belief in a god, human souls or spirits, an afterlife, or something ‘beyond the natural world.’”

Though writing from a secular journalistic perspective, Jackson reasons that people haven’t found a satisfying alternative to religion [or a satisfying alternative to biblical faith]. She reports that for the last few decades, much of the world has tried to go without God, a departure from most of recorded history. More than a billion people globally and about a third of Americans have tried to live without religion. Studies in recent years have offered insights into how that is going. The data doesn’t look good.

Actively religious people tend to report they are happier than people who don’t practice religion. Religious Americans are healthier, too. They are significantly less likely to be depressed or to die by suicide, alcoholism, cancer, cardiovascular illness, or other causes. In a long-term study, doctors at Harvard found that women who attended religious services once a week were 33 percent less likely to die prematurely than women who never attended. One researcher on the study said, that because “they had higher levels of social support, better health behaviors, and greater optimism about the future.”

Religiously affiliated Americans are more likely to feel gratitude (by 23 percentage points), spiritual peace (by 27 points), and “a deep sense of connection with humanity” (by 15 points) regularly than people without a religious affiliation.

Jackson describes the futile attempt by the secular community to replicate the kind of effect that faith has on its followers, but in the end points out that these kinds of faithless community gatherings with pop music, morality talks, and free food still come up short in providing what the faith community provides. As to these secular gatherings she adds, “None of us became regulars.”

Why is it so? It is because the faith community isn’t about gathering purely for social therapy, it is rather about life-changing transformation that can only happen under the influence and presence of God.

That is why there is Good News on the Faith Front. The bankrupt ideas of self-actualization, personal happiness, and post-modernism’s appeal to the idea that there are no absolutes has revealed the need for anchors of truth and pillars of faith.

As Green states, “Religion is not just another way to optimize your life.” Faith is the foundation upon which to build and sustain your life. Anything less will leave you with cold religion or useless cultural ideas that are constantly in flux. That is why the good news is that more and more are finding truth through biblical faith and many that had waywardly drifted are returning to the anchor of biblical faith. Let us rejoice in this, and let us pray that this is not a momentary season, but rather a momentous and lasting move of God. And remember, God is always trying to take us someplace new. I love being your Pastor!

For God’s Glory Alone,

Pastor Ray

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