Chapter 2 - Discussion

Chapter 2

DISCUSSION

In what ways can religion be used to control or manipulate people?

Purpose of Religion in the Society

Most of us doesn’t notice that, perhaps, religion is an important part of our lives. At one point of our life, everyone has probably been introduced in a religion, which usually happens at an early age. As a kid, it is possible that our parents brought us to church to learn values and be disciplined. Not only parents but also the  government use religion as a means of discipline

An article, 'Short essay on the Informal Means of social control’, by  a user named ‘millief’ at www.studymode.com agrees that religion plays a large part in our government as well.

The author states:

“Religion is a secondary agent of socialization, it plays a major part in many people’s lives, even though we may not be as religious as we used to be, religion still features strongly in our word as many of our laws and moral codes… “ (millief, July 2011)

Perhaps, even those who are not that religious cannot disagree that religion is important to our society. The following are the reasons why the researcher believes that religion is important to the society.

A. Teach Morals and Conducts

           

Apart from family and education institutions, religion is one of the areas in our society that teaches morals and conducts. It is responsible to shape the civilization while keeping harmony and peace.

When there was no religion, when humans were not civilized yet, people do whatever they thought right. They don’t have a clear boundary between right and wrong. Thus, they do whatever they want and get whatever they want. Probably, they fought one another for territory, food, partner and, maybe, the right and the authority to lead. This has changed when humans decided to worship gods – pagan worship. They probably noticed that they needed a proper and an organized society, so people created a belief system that can possibly standardize their methods of electing a leader and claiming a territory. Also, this system sets rules that make them more civilized.

According to another user, ‘rampmetal’ from www.studymode.com, the early human race, the homo sapiens, does not know what is right from wrong.  He stated that this human race is living in a disorganized society or community.

“From the beginning of (the) human race or Homo sapiens, they were run by curiosity. Human were started to live together but didn’t know what was right or wrong, used to do things whatever wanted like killing each other, mass adultery with inter and intra species, eating whatever wanted…. After 10,000 BC by the invention of agriculture human race started to live together and social structure started to form but there was the need of some rules and regulation and some form belief system which will be abide by all people. That’s where religion becomes the principles and the only carrier of righteousness a total system of living system socially.” (rampmetal, April 2012)

Religion offers people different purpose and meanings to life. Thus, religion can also be a factor for people in choosing a career path or a goal in life. Nevertheless, religion makes people strive each day to pursue their purpose.

B. Gives Positive Perspective on Life

We are all living in a world full of miseries, problems, and suffering. Despite all this, some people still have a positive view on life. Religion is one of the reasons why some people, especially the Filipinos, are content and happy with their life. Maybe, this is one of the reasons why Filipinos have a higher tolerance of hardship than other people does

One belief, that makes people content in life is that everything works for good. This results in poor people believing that they are poor for a reason and thus, they will always be poor. Because of this, even Filipinos who are going through tough times can make jokes and make fun of their situations.

Another belief is that there is a God who will always come to help in times of need to a person who believes in Him. This gives the believer's comfort, strength and hope to bear his problems. They put their trust in God in hopes of good outcomes.

Also, people believe that God always has a reason for the struggles an individual is going through. Even if they are uncertain of what will happen, they still hold on to this belief. Thus, this gives the believer a peace of mind even in the midst of problems.

Ajay Bhatt explained the importance of religion in his article, ‘What is the Importance of Religion?’. One of the reasons is that religion explains individual suffering.

“Man does not live by knowledge alone. He is an emotional creature. Religion serves to the emotions of man in times of his sufferings and disappointment. On God religion puts faith and entertains the belief that some unseen power moves in mysterious ways to make even his loss meaningful. In this way religion gives release from sorrow and release from fear. It helps man to bear his frustration and integrate his personality.” (Bhatt, n.d.)

By explaining why people experience certain difficulties in life, religion gives a new and positive perspective to people. Though, religion is not limited to giving new insights to people, but sometimes, it also turns a person’s life around. Their beliefs change them for the better. This can be seen in Nick Vujicic’s life.

Nick is one of this many people who was changed for the better. He was born with no arms and a single leg, and because of that he became depressed and tried committing suicide a lot of times during his childhood. But he changed because he decided to look from a higher perspective. He became faithful to God, and from then on, he became an inspiration to a lot of people around the world.

In Nick’s website, his testimony, ‘About Nick: His Story’, tells the many hardship and difficulties he went through and how these things was used by God to inspire people.

“My name is Nick Vujicic and I am thankful to have been born 30 years ago with no arms and no legs. I won’t pretend my life is easy, but through the love of my parents, loved ones, and faith in God, I have overcome my adversity and my life is now filled with joy and purpose.” (Vujicic, n.d)

Religion not only changes a person’s view in life through different divine explanations but also can change a person for the better.

Ways Religion can be used to Control or Manipulate People

A. Influence of the Leader

The church leader is the person who teaches and leads the congregation of a religion. They manage the church as well as its members. Followers tend to run to them when they need counselling and advice. Also, leaders have to keep in contact with their members, and in rare cases, be involved in a member’s personal matter. Another thing, a church leader who has the power to persuade people are skilled enough and have a solid reputation to people, will be able to convince others to support their ideas.  

Influential leaders do not only apply to church leaders because even leaders in a classroom can be influential. Dr. Maxwell admitted this in his article, ‘Leadership Is Influence: Nothing More, Nothing Less’.

“Leadership is influence—nothing more, nothing less. When you become a student of leaders, as I am, you recognize people's level of influence in everyday situations all around you.” (Dr. Maxwell, n.d.)

The point is, people who have influence have power over people. In other words, an influential person can cause another person to act according to the influencer’s ideals, values or beliefs. This may be a good thing if used in a good way. But, the bad thing with this is that, if such influential person uses this power to, consciously, make people have the same opinion as him. Opinion on a complicated matter such as the Reproductive Health Bill.

A news article by ABS-CBN news, entitled, “RH bill tests Church's political influence: Miriam”, told the interview with Sen. Miriam Santiago. Miriam challenges other senators about their votes being influenced by the Catholic church.

“Catholic bishops have been known to campaign against politicians who support bills that are against the Catholic Church's teaching.” (ABS-CBN News, 2012)

In this case, we can see that the Catholic church holds an influence in the politics. Probably, some politician will be afraid if the Catholic church would campaign against them. This will lose their chance of winning in the upcoming election because the majority of the Filipinos are Catholics.

B. Abuse of Power

Perhaps, not everyone has heard of a bad influential teacher or leader. They exist and it is a possibility. There are people clever enough who use their power over people, or in some cases, as they get more popular and more influential; they learn how to use it for their own. Slowly, the Good Word that they are supposed to teach become less of importance as they focus more on their self. These people are called ‘false teachers’. False teachers are people who distort the message of the Bible for their own use. Sometimes they twist the message to win people’s heart. This is where abuse of power comes in.

“The Rise and Fall of Jim Jones” is an article written by Rick Ross which tells the story of a false teacher named, Jim Jones. According to Ross, Jones started out as a respected community leader and he was involved in charity works and programs that helps the poor and the elderly. He founded the People’s Temple, a quasi-religious organization. Later on, he became involved with politics wherein he became influential .

Ross stated, “Jones' political machine continues to garner him influence by helping to elect Mayor Moscone, District Attorney Joseph Freitas and Sheriff Richard Hongisto in 1975”. (Ross, 2002)

Then, Jones continued to buy influence through giving out money to institutes and individuals. However, Jones’ fall began when reporter Marshall Kilduff exposed him.

“It detailed Jones' faked healings and extremely coercive fund raising that pushed members to liquidate their assets and hand over the money to the church.”  (Ross, 2002)

Jim Jones’  used his popularity as a tool to make money from his congregation. Sadly, there are also a lot who is like him nowadays. They use religion and the desire of human to believe in something to gain benefits, such as money and political advantage, for their own.

C. By the System of Belief Itself

We may not notice it, but sometimes our actions, decisions and how we present ourselves are based on what our religion says. There are a lot of Do’s and Don’ts that the followers have to abide in. As time goes, these rules become our beliefs and tradition.

An example of this scenario is the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC) – a religion famous for its system of belief involving the elections. They use bloc voting every election. It is an old tradition of INC in which the whole congregation has to vote as a herd during national elections. For them, it might be just another tradition that they have to follow, but it has great effects on the politics even if it is not intended to.

This is kind of a possible manipulative system exist also abroad. Let us look at Andrew’s experience with Mar’s Hill Church (MHC) in Ruth Graham’s article entitled “A Shunning in Seattle”. The article tells the story of Andrew as he went through the disciplinary procedures given to him by the MHC.

According to Graham, Andrew was a committed member of Mars Hill Church and was engaged to a daughter of a church elder, but he made a mistake. Andrew cheated on his fiancé, and thus, he was sent a disciplinary contract. This contract states that Andrew will not be involved in serving MHC while undergoing the disciplinary acts or procedures. Also, he will not be allowed to date nor pursue any woman inside or outside MHC. As part of the procedure,  the contract requires Andrew that he writes down all his “sexual and emotional attachment history with women”. But instead of agreeing to the contract, Andrew decided to leave the church.Then MHC posted a letter addressed to MHC members from the Pastor of Andrew. The letter states that the members should treat Andrew as an unbeliever because he was not able to complete the disciplinary actions and refuse to sign the contracts.

“The fury over Andrew’s experience—and his decision to publicize the church’s internal disciplinary procedures—has led to accusations by other Christians that one of the most powerful evangelical voices in the country, Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll, employs a cultlike leadership style.” (Graham, 2012)

Looking more into the case, the researcher found “Mars Hill Refuge”, a blog where people with the same experience as Andrew’s with MHC, can share their stories too.  There are a lot of people who went through the same experience as Andrew’.  According to them they felt abused, wronged  and judged.

Because of these incidents, questions about the church’s disciplinary practices arise. Mars Hill Church was confronted with questions about whether its disciplinary measures are, as Graham puts it, “misunderstood and biblical, or disturbingly controlling”.

In this kind of belief system, where such disciplinary actions have caused members to be abused, judged and isolated; reputations and relationships are torn down. MHC members surrounding the victims were made to believe that MHC ex-attendees are unbelievers and force them to not associate with the victims.

Dysfunction of Religion

One of the main flaw in religion is that it divides people, just like how different race divides a nation. Having different systems of beliefs that share little in common, would certainly generate conflicts and problems in the society. From these conflicts, oppositions of beliefs emerge, thus resulting in religious discrimination.

Throughout the world’s history, we can see evidence of religious discrimination. Adolf Hitler hates the Jews because he believes that they are inferior to the Germans, so when he had the power, he exterminated, approximately, six million Jews. Another instance, up until now, Christian missionaries are not welcomed into the middle-east. There are news where Christian missionaries are killed or sentenced to death by these Islamic nations.

Thus, we can’t deny how much religion has divided the world and how great the gap it created from one religion against another.

Attitudes of Believers towards their Religion

Every people have their own views on religion. They have the freedom to choose what beliefs they are going to take in and to believe in, but problems arise when people become too religious.

Before anything else, the word religious, as an adjective, can be defined in three ways.

1. Having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity.

2. Of, concerned with, or teaching religion: a religious text.

3. Extremely scrupulous or conscientious: religious devotion to duty.

           

The first one is applied to the people who takes the idea of God seriously that they do more efforts and devotion to study this. As for the second one, this definition of ‘religious’ is commonly used in a negative way in the evangelical churches. This refers to the legalism and ritualistic aspects of religion. The third definition, which is also can be used as a verb applies to how a person behaves and treat certain areas of his life. In this part of the research, the second definition is used.

In this current generation, being a Christian and being religious are said to be two different things. Religious people can be a Christian, but not all Christians are religious. By definition, Christians are those whose beliefs are based on Jesus’ teachings and the Bible, while religious people are those who strongly believe in the religion itself and who carefully follow and obey rules and laws, even if  those rules are set by men. In fact, they are addicted to religion to the point that they believe whatever the religious leaders says or any belief that has to do with religion.

Take the Filipinos for example, even before Christianity was introduced, our ancestors already have a religion which is the pagan belief or animism. This only proves that Filipinos are religious. This trait made Filipinos vulnerable, and an easy target when the Spaniards came. They took this opportunity to colonize us by using religion to change our beliefs. Because we know nothing about Christianity, we submit and let the Spaniard teach us, which gave them the opportunity to take advantage, as well as manipulate us.

Another thing about most religious people is that they believe that they have to do good deeds, be a good person, do this, and do that. For them, religion is a legalism of rules and regulations. Most of the time, this results people to think "Unless you accept our point of view, you are not one of us!". Another result is that people become too obedient to the rules and laws that they forget the main core of religion, which is to become Christ-like and follow the word of God.