While as a religious person, I tend to think positively about the effects of religion on people, it is by no means uncontroversial to think that religion improves people. There are a great many people who, very loudly, proclaim that religion is among the worst things to happen to humanity, and point to centuries of religious warfare as well as the violence that has been inflicted by religious authorities on ordinary people from the days of the Inquisition to the operations of sharia courts in contemporary Islamic republics. To this litany of complaints, those who wish to defend religion point to the beautiful ethical writings as well as the practical institutions of medicine and learning as well as serving the needs of people that have resulted from people who take their religious beliefs seriously and think and act on these beliefs. In many ways, these people are talking at cross purposes to each other. When we are dealing with matters of institutional power, those who claim to be religious are often no better in wielding power than those who make no such claims, and religion wielded as a club to beat down others can lead people to be sore about the subject of God and religion. On the other hand, few can deny the practical benefits that the personal piety of people engaged in good works have had for humanity as a whole, even when we have not always shared the religious beliefs of the people who have met the bodily, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs of others. It is this disconnect that I wish to discuss.

When we examine the ways that religion makes you a better person, there are at least two perspectives in which this question can be answered. One of these is from the perspective of the righteous person themselves. It is easy for us to think, as religious people, that following the precepts of our faith will make us more righteous and better in God’s sight than the unrighteous people we see all around us. We may view religion as some sort of core class that some people skip or fail, and that proper knowledge and proper conduct gives us high marks in God’s eyes and allows us to earn a better future than that earned by those who perform worse in the eyes of God (and ourselves, because of course we see things as God does). This is often a dangerous view, though. We are not often very just judges when it comes to comparing ourselves among ourselves, and while we often lack self-knowledge because of our willful blindness about our own shortcomings and struggles, we frequently lack any insight about what is going on inside the minds and hearts of other people, and not only are totally ignorant of the subject but think ourselves knowledgeable, which makes our pitiful ignorance even worse. If we are to come to any reasonable sort of understanding about how religion makes our lives better, we cannot look at how religious beliefs (including that of self-esteem in contemporary society) makes us feel better about ourselves or makes us think more highly about ourselves than others. We need something more solid to stand on.

Alternatively, we can look at the perspective of other people. There is no doubt that other people will have a biased opinion on the matter of how religion improves someone. When others are from different faith traditions or are not particularly religious at all, they are not likely to know or care about the specifics of our religious beliefs, and are not likely to view religious knowledge very highly unless that knowledge serves to benefit other people. What people are likely to rate very high are those practical virtues which lead us to be kind and gracious to other people, that make us more likely to help others in their need, to correct their ignorance with patience and skill, to provide what they are lacking in their lives, to give them hope and encouragement in a life that is often full of suffering and despair. To the extent that our religious beliefs lead us to help the sick, give others practical and useful knowledge to better their lives, provide for food and shelter and work, treat others with dignity and respect, our religious beliefs are likely to be viewed with at least grudging respect by people who are willing to speak on behalf of the practical outworking of our faith even if they do not share that faith in particular. In contrast, religious beliefs that make us feel proud about ourselves and lead us to look down on others and take advantage of others are likely to be viewed as negative and worthles aspects of religion.

It is easy to criticize others for being biased in their view of religion, because the practical virtues of charity and grace are of benefit to others, while more intellectual aspects of faith or the use of one’s religious piety to gain institutional power may not serve others as openly. The noted Christian thinker C.S. Lewis in his book on the Abolition of Man spent a considerable amount of time seeking to show how no matter what one’s religious or cultural background was, there was a consistent way of life that consisted in acting with kindness and consideration towards others and in refraining from doing evil against them. Some religious traditions emphasized the golden rule of doing unto others what we would want others to do unto us, while others emphasized the silver rule of not doing to others what we would not want others to do unto us, but in the end, those distinctions amounted to broad areas of agreement about moral standards.

It is always easy to look at the way that the world is messed up and to point the finger of one’s religious beliefs outward to those whom we believe are screwing up, but it is harder to see the warnings about pride or our desires to dominate and exploit others and to point the finger at ourselves and see ourselves personally as part of the problem, and to respond not with self-hatred but with repentance and improvement. I could cite numerous examples in the Bible where true religion is reflected in the development of a practical goodness towards other people and meeting their needs in a fallen world of difficulty. Others who come from other traditions would be able to cite their own such examples. To know is easy, but comparatively worthless. If we want religion to make ourselves better people, we have to act it out and become better in our dealings with others, and to let others see us as religious people from our goodness rather than hear it from our trumpet blasts and loud proclamations, or our fierce denunciations of those who do not meet our demanding standards that even we ourselves do not live up to.