religion it is not so much a "force for good in the world" as an inspiration to strive for, a pursuit of goodness

What is religion good for? | Ian Linden | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

I would not like to go toe to toe with Christopher Hitchens on whether religion is a force for good in the world. He is far smarter – and funnier – than Richard Dawkins.

Opponents risk the intellectual equivalent of prolonged body-line bowling.

Nor is there any sense in denying that "religion" has been a force for division, oppression and even cruelty. Any system of belief that denies this historical reality, claims to be pure, exclusively liberating, just and true – whether religious or not – is more likely to be a force for ill rather than for good.

But that is not really the root of the difficulty. It is the idea that judicial scales can be set up, so that opponents in debate load evidence on one side and the other, until it swings conclusively to a result. So in one pan you put the selfless service of millions of people of faith working through the centuries with the poor and suffering because of their compassionate religious convictions. On the other you put the Crusades, jihads, sex abuse and a capacity for making women second-class members of the club, and the millions of people harmed by such abuse of power. Religion is perhaps most potentially dangerous when it gets into the power game and is used to bolster nationalism or ethnicity, whether it be in the US or Russia, Israel or Iran, the Balkans or the Indian subcontinent. Though, apart from the side of the Polish Communist party, it understandably got a positive press in 1980s Poland when it did just that.

A balance sheet seems a fair way of dealing with the question. But it is not that easy. Religion is powerful stuff. It can be used for good or evil, to touch the hem of God or to sink into the abyss of human wickedness – to paraphrase Jacques Maritain. It can lead – and has led – to wars between nations and other religious groups. It can cause – and has caused – not only dependency and infantilism but abiding psychological damage. But it can and does transform, create artisans of a new humanity, build a consciousness of the common good, as well as console and comfort.

So where do you go with such a question? It is undoubtedly good to give voice to all those who know what contribution religion has made to their lives, to air the other side of the Hitchens story. But it feels intuitively like the wrong question – unless you have some outsized axe to grind. "Good for whom?" "Good for what?"

Yet even that is not an adequate way to pose the question. Religion should not judged on whether it is "useful" or not. It is not a "thing" to be instrumentalised, used for some extraneous purpose, whether a this-worldly or other-worldly one.

Nonetheless, the fact is that religion is "used" – and misused. And precisely for that reason people of faith are bound – in the name of the God who is the source of all that is good – to take a critical approach to "religion". Jesus sharply turned the question back to the questioner: "Why do you ask me what is good? There is only one who is good " (Matthew 19:17)". That is a stance I guess might bring this year's Munk debate to a grinding halt.

But for the sake of the argument let's ask, and try to answer, the supplementary question: what is religion good for? Because the main question is unanswerable whatever the final vote. Here are some suggestions for an answer. It is good when it transcends the boundaries, structures, norms and conventions of "the world" as it is. Often best when it is "counter-cultural", it does not conform – and it must resist the tendency to be conventional. It says that we are accountable for our actions … and our inaction.

It recognises a higher authority than the state (religious freedom is vital) – but it must resist the tendency to be a tool of political power. It does not offer false comfort (Trevor Huddleston) – and it must resist the tendency to use religion as an opiate. It provides a counter to the human tendency to power – (libido dominandi) by the practice of humility.

Augustine's City of God traces the libido dominandi – the lust for power; the will to dominate, to control, to be in charge, to defeat an opponent, to win an argument – as humanity's number one problem. It ran as a dark current through the history of the Roman Empire, through Jewish, Christian, Muslim history from the first pair of brothers, Cain and Abel, and though all human history. And it runs and runs.

Religion creates a framework in which it is possible to love extravagantly, to be a champion of compassion, to sacrifice self-interest and even self, to be a saint. It makes it possible to do the unsafe, to risk, to live on the margins, to allow hope to be the only security, above all to forgive.

In short, religion it is not so much a "force for good in the world" as an inspiration to strive for, a pursuit of goodness. It holds out the possibility of an alternative world and a new humanity.

via ScribeFire