What Has Gone Wrong with Religion
This, Too, May be a Mental Health Matter
We have a rare calendar convergence of the three great “Religions of the Book.” Muslims are celebrating the Holy Month of Ramadan. Christians are celebrating Holy Week, leading up to Easter. Jews are celebrating Passover and have just had their annual Sedarim.
However, something very serious has gone wrong, very wrong, with our religious traditions. Whether we conclude that all these religions have been hijacked or been twisted to fit false and dangerous interpretations of their faiths, the situation we are in continues to spawn great violence, all too often in the very name of religion. Currently, Israel is exchanging bombs and missiles with Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza.
Before going further, I will state that I have a master’s in divinity in addition to a doctorate in medicine. I have studied many of the major faith traditions, including the above and Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism.
If Muhammad were alive today, I believe he would be appalled at the extremists who practice Islam with their outlandish discrimination against women and such practices as female genital mutilation. If Jesus were alive today, I think he would be railing against the Evangelicals, who seem to resemble more the money changers and the Pharisees who would eventually be responsible for crucifying him. If Moses were alive today, I imagine he would be in shock at some of the laws of “the Jewish State” that attempt to justify the equivalent of pogroms and apartheid against the Palestinian people, as once inflicted upon the Jewish people.
Since I am myself Christian, I will focus now on the extraordinarily dangerous extremism within my own faith and how it collaborates with Jewish extremism in Israel. The documentary, “Praying for Armageddon,” which recently premiered at a major film festival in Copenhagen, shows how extreme ideological Christian Zionists have allied with extreme Jews, whose main motivations are political and financial—so much so that they are willing to overlook totally divergent, actually opposed, ideological and religious beliefs. The film director Tonje Hessen Schei states: “What they are really pushing for is the destruction of our civilization. It’s quite outrageous and mind blowing, really. And I don’t think a lot of Americans realize that the sort of hidden end time Armageddon lobby [has] real political power.”
What I have called our “collective suicidal tendency,” both in my textbook as well as in these Substack publications, is a mental health-related tendency that can now be generalized over multiple domains, including the political, social, cultural, and religious. In order for any of these domains to express their original intent, be it the proper governance of a nation, the welfare of a society, or the sustenance of a spiritual community, there are basic mental health dimensions that must be minded and taken care of before we can have basic preservation of life.
“Religions”, like all institutions, are subject to being taken over by the evil and malevolent forces that exist in all humans. In fact, religions, which are based on non-provable assumptions as well as training young minds to use less of their intellectual and cognitive powers and more of their emotional dependence on others for approval and instructions, are more likely to attract as “leaders” those who are desirous of or compelled to use those malevolent forces. History teaches us that much of war, conquest, sadism, etc. throughout the ages has been in the name of “religion “.
I enjoy these articles and agree but find myself thinking they stop too soon. What should we be taught that would help us not follow egomaniacs and the non-empathetic? I feel like it all stems from people being unaware of their true motivations, a fear of self-evaluation and a need to feel superior. What sort of curriculum could be taught that could guide folks back to a more humble approach to life?