The word religion is not a popular word with evangelical Christians, but for different reasons than the secularist’s objections. The thorough humanist prefers no religion, but Christians, believing their faith is the truly revealed one, seem distant from other faiths. Exclusiveness is also found in other faiths, and has contributed to bloody warfare in the competitive approach to defenses of various faiths. Rightly understood, religion is an instructive word that includes the broad spectrum of faith based thought for theists. The Apostles Paul and James, Luke as well, use the word to the benefit of our education and understanding of the genre of belief in God. There are related assumptions and arguments (theology). In Galatians, Chapter One, the Apostle Paul refers to his pre-Christian faith context as the sect of religion referring to that of the Pharisees. The word religion is significantly helpful in understanding broad discussions of supernatural concepts, and the impact of that understanding upon the natural world. We need some word to refer to objective discussion about real or alleged supernatural ideas and experiences. For example, studies show that favored religion serves man well in his health, length of life, happiness, and adjustment to nature. The people of Costa Rica who live in some deprivation are healthier, longer lived, and happier than we who live in an antiseptic, healthy environment, with information on medicine, diet, and various benefits that are costly, unevenly provided, and troublesome as well as beneficial. In an effort to rid society of religious faith, many sophisticates of the world take away the proven benefit of faith, not just Christianity, in the well-being of citizens. Of course there are other factors in the story. The Costa Ricans tend toward taking light meals, keep physically active in old age, maintain a pleasantry about life that is identified as happiness, and the like. Their religion, largely Roman Catholic Christianity, is agreed to be integral to their longevity, sense of well-being, and hope. For them all this is commonly in a context of general poverty.
In common grace, God permits society, a society that likes to measure things for their positive or negative meaning or results, to evaluate so simple, but also so profound, a matter as faith, faith in God, as a factor that serves the good of mankind. This does not argue that faith in this or that God will, in the end of things, really produce positive benefit to immortality, but that faith itself has meaning for good. Since that is proven to be the case, can we find a faith that is true and able to produce what it promises? This is the ultimate test that the person of faith must live his faith to see, and which results will only be convincing to all after it comes to pass. There are results along the way, if the faith is meaningful – results like answers to prayer. Those results are unconvincing to the doubter who may pass them off as the chances of life, as remissions from disaster, and accounted for in some currently unexplained act of nature.
The skeptic does not handle well the evidence of the value of faith, and is even less skilled in differentiating genuine religion from conjured. The person of faith presses on to monitor the reality of personal experience. The Christian believes in the rightness of the search in the effectiveness of the Scriptures in life, both for daily living, and in the assurance of immortality in the redemption of Jesus Christ. One of the oddities in all this is that there is strong agreement that truth is a good thing, worthy of the best from our lives. If God is beneficial to length and quality of life, as careful studies show; and, if God does not exist, then the great gift to mankind is a magnificent falsehood. If that falsehood be effective as truth in search for the good life, what other alleged truth-ideas exist that may not be true? Is this our conundrum? *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020