How do people use spirituality and religion to justify suffering?
How Do People Use Religion and Spirituality to Justify Suffering?
Broadly, this occurs in two ways: one that is healthy and empowering, and another that is unhealthy and disempowering.
The healthy and empowering approach involves placing suffering within a broader philosophical and theological context provided by a particular tradition. For example, understanding that we possess a spiritual core that exists beyond this life, capable of evolving and growing even when our physical and mental selves face difficulties, offers immense resilience. This broader perspective enables us to accept and endure life’s unavoidable challenges and adversities.
We are not merely pleasure-seeking beings; we are also meaning-seeking. While no one desires problems or troubles per se, if we can perceive these difficulties as contributing to a worthwhile purpose, we can face them gracefully and gallantly. A singular contribution of the world’s spiritual traditions has been to infuse their followers’ lives with a meaning and purpose that transcends their immediate circumstances. This can provide an enormous degree of hope, strength, and positivity.
Life’s painfulness is often exacerbated by a sense of unfairness. However, understanding how our sufferings can contribute to our purification and spiritual evolution is profoundly empowering. If we view our spiritual core as gold, and our physical and mental bodies as alloys around it, then adversities become the fire that purifies our attachments to these temporary shells, helping us manifest our spiritual essence more fully. Just as gold emerges brighter through fire, the soul emerges more evolved, wiser, and stronger through the crucible of adversity. Providing people with a sense of meaning and purpose, and thereby empowering them, has been an invaluable contribution of spiritual traditions worldwide. While the specific ways this meaning is provided may vary between traditions, and some forms of meaning may withstand rational scrutiny better than others (a separate subject), the overall sense of meaning and purpose can be deeply empowering.
On a negative note, a disempowering use of religion occurs when it teaches not just acceptance but passivity. This happens when people are encouraged or even instructed to do nothing about their current distresses, allowing social injustices to be perpetuated in the name of religion. This can individually paralyze people by telling them that their suffering is their preordained lot, divinely arranged. If the hope for a better future in a future life paralyses individuals or collectives from challenging existing injustices—wherever such injustices can be challenged and changed—then this is undesirable. This is what Karl Marx famously meant when he said, “Religion is the opium of the masses.” I would amend that statement to say that religion can be misused as an opium for the masses. It can be misused by religious teachers, sometimes in collusion with existing powers, and followers may internalize this distorted view of religion. However, to broadly assert that religion is the opium of the masses is to monstrously misrepresent the vast positive contributions religion has made to people’s lives.
While the differentiation between “religion” and “spirituality” is relatively recent (dating back perhaps 30-50 years), the common understanding often associates “religion” with ritualism and dogma, and “spirituality” with openness to exploring various paths for internal growth and living a more meaningful life. We could say that the great religious traditions of the world were fundamentally meant for a spiritual purpose, but they haven’t always functioned spiritually. The difference is more functional than essential: functionally, religions haven’t always been spiritual, but essentially, they were meant to provide pathways for people to live more spiritually.
When religions function in a healthy, spiritual way, even to a small degree, they typically foster a culture of charity. This charity not only contributes to addressing social injustices but also inculcates virtues such as contentment and regulates, or at least curbs, greed among those who possess more. Similarly, for those who “have not,” their problems often extend beyond a lack of necessities and facilities; they may also struggle with self-defeating habits, like alcoholism, which worsen their situation. The latent spirituality within religious traditions can inspire people to change themselves, to gain greater self-mastery, and thereby break free from habits that exacerbate their difficult circumstances.
Thus, religion and spirituality can be used not only to frame present sufferings within a greater context and find meaning in them but also to activate, mobilize, and stimulate change—individually and socially—so that things can be made better even in this world. Of course, not all injustices can be removed, simply because life itself is, on one level, inherently unequal: some are born healthier, with higher IQs, or with greater talents. We cannot achieve absolute egalitarianism at the functional, material level of reality. However, if everyone understands their essential identity as spiritual and their essential purpose as spiritual, then we can achieve a healthy combination of rectifying our situations in this world by improving our consciousness internally, and also accepting the things that cannot be changed, thereby living more gracefully and purposefully.