a paper on religion

Religion, Painkiller or Pain-maker?


There is a time when people feel that they need to believe in God. In the Korean movie, Secret Sunshine(Milyang), Sin-ae has such a difficult time after her husband passes away and her son is abducted in the city, Milyang where she and her son plan to start a new life. After the terrible events, she loses her control and finds something she can depend. Even though she becomes an adherent of Christianity and goes to Church on a regular basis, she begins to defy God when she encounters the murderer of her son. The murderer confesses that he is a Christian and is forgiven by God. She cannot say anything because she feels the he is so impudent and does not seem to be regretful of his crime. Although Sin-ae is consoled by Christianity in the beginning, Christianity plunges her into deep depression in the end. Religion can be a painkiller or a pain-maker because it has not only positive functions but also negative functions.

Religion can be a painkiller because religion helps people to go through their crisis. A lot of religious people become religious when they have a hard time. When they are broke due to the bankruptcy of their company or when they are physically or mentally hurt, they turn to be desperate about their life. They may feel so much pain that they want to avoid the reality, even thinking of committing suicide. They need a painkiller which can release their pain and can arrive at the conclusion that the most ultimate painkiller is religion. Since they are too weak and likely to be swept by even trivial accidents, they expect God or religious faith to make them forget about the painful reality. For example, the Buddha told us, "Human life is suffering" and it means we are not the only persons who suffer. If we believe in Buddhism, we can feel that suffering is a natural process and can avoid falling into depression.

In addition, religion offers rules and guidance on seeking happiness. As human beings, we all seek for a high level of happiness, not being satisfied with only eating and sleeping. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs models, there are five levels of needs: physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging, esteem and self-actualization. These needs are represented as a pyramid. Maslow suggests that people begin to desire higher needs when their basic needs are met. Physiological needs are regarded as the most basic needs and take up the lowest part in the pyramid. In contrast, self-actualization which occupies the highest part is to realize a person's potential and religion can be an element in this level of needs. All religions have their own definition of happiness so they can give many ways to meet self-actualization. For instance, Christianity gives ways to be happy including regarding every event as thankful and reducing anxiety by prayer. On the other hand, the Buddhist approach to happiness is to keep a calm mind which requires the ability to separate oneself from worldly desires such as a craving for money or fame.

Moreover, religion can give norms about which behaviors are proper. When we were born as human beings, strictly speaking, we were not human beings at the moment. We did not know what is right and wrong so we hesitated to do actions. We need to learn shared norms, customs, values to live in a society. However, there are so many norms in the world and we might be confused about what is really right. Yet, when a person embraces in a religion, the religion gives definite norms for him. For example, Islamic asks people to take precautions against excess and wastefulness which lead to greed. When people are greedy, they want to have more and more. They are not satisfied with what they already have so they always keep complaining. Accordingly, they lose endeavor and enthusiasm for work and become lazy, which destroys the actions in regard to hereafter. Since Muslims have a strict code of social rules, they do not waver and do actions confidently.


Furthermore, people who have the same religion can build a group identity. Since we are not perfect by ourselves, we need a group in which we can cooperate with each other and find our identity. As we can share worldviews and values with people in the same religion, we often sympathize with them and build up a shared awareness which is developed into a group identity. A group identity is fortified through religious rites and events. While Christians celebrate the Easter which is a Christian festival when Jesus Christ’s return to life, they go to church and have a Easter service together. Ramadan is another example of religious event. Ramadan is the Islamic month of fasting when Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking and sex during daylight hours. The objective of the event is to teach Muslims about patience and submissiveness to God. Like Christians and Muslims, individuals can easily catch a shared spirituality while going through the same rites and events in religion so that they can build a group identity.

On the other hand, religion can be a pain-maker conveying two negative functions. A function of religion is to separate the world into small fragments and deepen conflicts. As each religion has different beliefs and a distinct area, there is low tolerance towards each other. Also, over time, one religion can be divided into many sects. In the early American history, the conflict between the Puritans and the Quakers is a good example of religious intolerance. The Puritans moved to the American continent to build up an ideal religious society which can be described as "City upon a hill", because they were persecuted in England. Even though they were quite ambitious for their religion, there were so many problems to adapt to the new environment and establish a new society. As political and religious leaders overemphasized the rules and laws in the Puritan society, a group of people argued that the Bible should be the most important part, not the rules they made. Then they left the society and became an independent sect, the Quakers. The problem was the Puritans were so obsessed with their religious purity that they oppressed the Quakers so hard. In summary, religion acts as a knife which divides the world into many small pieces.

To make the matter worse, people use religion to justify violence. A religion has its own beliefs and rituals which can injure people and religion can be used to rationalize the abusive actions. The Sarin attrack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 shows how immorally religious people exploit religious beliefs. The members of Aum Shinrikyo released sarin on several lines of the Tokyo Metro, which ended up killing thirteen people, injuring fifty and causing temporary vision problems for about a thousand others. They said that they committed the action to bring down the Japanese government and make the group's founder the "emperor" of Japan. In this case, the members of the religion were blind due to the ambition for their religion. They were overly into the religion that they forgot about their humanity and conscience. Another case is the September 11 attacks which is suicide attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States. The terrorists who had Islamic background hijacked the two American planes and crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, justifying their actions with their religion.

In conclusion, as religion has both positive and negative functions, it should be carefully understood. Religion can revive a bunch of people nearly dying who lost their hopes for their life. Also religion guides people into a path of happiness, informs what is right and builds up a group of beliefs. On the other hand, religion can fragmentize the world and make people fight against each other. Even worse, people kill others and justify their action with their religion. That is why religion should be regarded as a double-edged sword. We should use the sword to make human beings prosper, not to result in the extinction of human beings.