If the purpose of life is wealth, ease, and technological innovation, why has our culture’s achievements in these areas made such a mess of things? If we really love our children, why are we bringing them into a world in which so many environmental indicators are worsening year by year? If we are as moral as we say we are, how can we support—through what we buy and sell, how we work and seek pleasure—a system that has disproportionately painful effects on our own poor and on the developing nations? If God is, as many say, everywhere, how do we recognize Him in the toxic waste dumps, the dead lakes, and the coral bleached white by warming oceans?
When our hopes are called into question and our self-worth has become doubtful, when despair lurks close by and we sense the need for some deep changes in our lives, some would say we should turn to faith—for it is the job of religion to lend a hand precisely when things seem darkest. Religion offers hope of miracles: the Hebrew slaves liberated from Egypt, Jesus resurrected from the dead, the exuberantly impossible Buddhist ideal in which every single being is freed from suffering.
On the personal side, as inspirational Christian writer C. S. Lewis told us, suffering is God’s wake-up call, and we may well respond to that call by seeking out religious wisdom. Much of religion is, after all, geared to help us in need. It can both morally instruct and comfort us, providing rituals in which we acknowledge our sins and receive forgiveness. Religion reassures us that a change of heart is always possible, for if God can act for us, we can also act for ourselves. As well, religion also offers a fresh perspective on the meaning of life: stressing obedience to God rather than worship of emperors, the pursuit of sacred rather than monetary goals, and love of moral virtue over social standing. Most important, religion has said in no uncertain terms that we can find God in solidarity with the afflicted and the vulnerable, that wisdom begins with compassion, and that God was willing to take on a whole world’s suffering in hopes of releasing us from it.
Social Beneficence and Religious Vision: People of God and Their Community
