I have talked to people who have said religion helped turn their life around. A frequent comment seems to revolve around the benefits into putting one’s faith in a higher power. This seems inherently logical for someone to do if they were not able to manage their life well on their own. Perhaps someone from a broken family would benefit the most from becoming a part of a church community.
Personally, I have gotten annoyed by some overzealous members of the Born Again Christians in trying to reform me while they maintained justifying their hypocrisy. However, there are definitely business and social advantages to joining a religious community, even those sects that regularly engage in hypocrisy. It seems one’s outlook, whether it is along the lines of “we should help each other” or “Use each other” may not matter too much in such an organization if all can benefit. Imagine being able to go to many places in the world where you are accepted immediately as a member of a community, where people are reasonably reliable with their helpfulness and positive attitude. A place to stay, some food to eat, and a perhaps a solid overview of the scene. Maybe the visitor to this community can chip in with some of their time in helping furthering some church projects during their stay.
Religion is not inherently evil, except, perhaps, in the eyes of certain political entities that want all focus on themselves. In addition, organized and well run groups of people are not easily fooled by politicians trying to claim they can solve a problem better than the church group can. In fact, religion has to be seen as threat to power by those with a Big Government philosophy.
Perhaps both of us should visit our local churches and meet the people there. Odds are, most church members are probably firing on more cylinders in their life than we are. We should be honored they would be happy to meet us.
