Grateful for traditional religion for many reasons: for all good work done in the name of God, goodwill and service; the transformation of people and even societies. The ways it helps organize thoughts and create meaning.  I am also grateful for all the jokes and puns based upon mainline religions – the profound and silly religious expressions and beliefs over all the years.  Here is one I received from one of you recently:

An atheist was walking through the woods, remarking on the beauty of nature all around, the power of the rivers, the grandeur of the mountains, when he encountered a snarling seven foot grizzly bear.  It began to chase the atheist.  The man ran and ran, but the bear got closer. Finally, the bear caught up to the man who fell down. The bear lifted his giant paw up to strike the man.  The atheist called out, “Lord.” 

Time stopped, a light shown down from the sky and a voice said, “You deny my existence and even teach others I do not exist…and you explain creation as an absurd historical accident – and you expect me to treat you as a believer?”  The atheist said, “Lord, it would be hypocritical to expect you to treat me as a Christian, but could you regard and treat the bear as a Christian bear?”  

Time went on, the light went away.  The bear, who was ready to strike the man, slowly and gently put his paw down….put it aside the other paw and said, “ Thank you, Lord, for this food I am about to eat, through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Isn’t amazing, maddening and even funny at how much energy, attention and time have been spent on various models of religion?  The traditional theistic frameworks of our time?  Isn’t also deeply sobering that expressions and models of mainline religion have caused so much division, unhappiness, anger, prejudice and violence in the world?  We have so much to account for when it comes to religion and the trajectories of thoughts and beliefs that have guided so much behavior and misbehavior over the centuries. 

I have thought long and hard about religion for a lot of years.  And you have too.  I am honored to be with you today and to explore some questions in this wellness series.  Last week Toni articulated good thoughts and recommendations around ritual and food and creating sacramental reality and understandings in our meals and gatherings.  Today we explore the question:  Is Religion good for your health?

I had a conversation recently with a person checking out this community and ministry.  This person indicated some overall discouragement about the state of the world and the overall demise of the human situation: Lack of being centered, not being grounded, not living in balance with freedom, morality and responsibility.  She has been living in a malaise of thoughts that have weighed her down.  And now she is exploring this place. If this place has anything to offer, it better be a community of people that would add to your life: lively, honest, real, authentic people; it better include programs that are stimulating, comforting and relevant; it better espouse religion that adds to one’s health and happiness in profound, humanizing ways.  It had better be about good religion.  Since I use the words “good religion,” we surmise there is “bad religion.” 

Bad religion is anything that leads to more division, judgment, fear, defensiveness, anxiety.  Any system or orientation that leads one to feel superior.  Good religion does the opposite:  leads to reconciliation, ease, collaboration; it brings together and does not cause more division.  It could be said that bad religion is about substantiating one as being right; good religion as doing right. 

I’ve spoken before how the word religion and the word ligament have the same root word: Lig.  What does a ligament do?  Keeps together what is separate.  Brings together what may be opposite; it draws together and holds in healthy tension what may come apart.  It contributes to the working of the leg or joint or mechanism. We work from the image and purpose of a ligament and apply it to religion:  Does it bring people together?  Does it drive people apart and cause alienation? Does it soften people toward each other or create more adversity and an attitude of superiority? 

The service and worship of God or the supernatural. Commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance. A personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs and practices. Scrupulous conformity.  A cause, principle or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith. Religion is an overall orientation to life, rather than a system of salvation to some hoped-for heaven in the afterlife.

We find ourselves rooted in this wellness series that compels us to ask some important and basic questions. 

Does religion, in any of its forms, contribute to our well-being?  Does it allow us to live with more ease or more distress?  Does religion, with its various orientations to life, humanity, the cosmos, and salvation lead to greater health, balance, respect and mutuality?

I want to explore this with you this morning in hopes that you will be inspired to keep your eyes open for and live out religion that heals and adds to your overall well-being.

Extrinsic and intrinsic forms of religions affect mental and overall health.  Dependency models – Traditional theistic and Fall-redemption models have been shown to exacerbate feelings of inadequacy; increasing dis-ease, anxiety and anger; these models can more easily lead to arrogance/sense of superiority or entitlement. 

Research, hundreds of studies, including my own conducted back in 2000 indicate happiness, perceptions of happiness relate clearly to religious beliefs and orientation.  For example, most people find it inconceivable to believe their religious orientation or beliefs are the only way to be guided through life. Living with a sense of superiority and arrogance leads to fear, defensiveness, frustration, impatience and unhappiness.  It breaks down and leads to greater sense of anger and dissonance.  Tight, answer based religion leads to greater dis-ease for many.  There is a greater degree of sublimation of thoughts and feelings which in turn lead to depression, hostility and intolerance.  Research generally shows that happiness increases as you move from a tight, answer-based scheme toward a more intrinsic religious orientation and then toward a spiritual humanistic system.

The place of humanism:  Is this my religion?  A doctrine or attitude, a world view, an ideology,  a way of life centered on human interests and values, a philosophy that asserts the dignity and worth of humans and their capacity for self-growth, self-actualizations through reasoning which often rejects supernaturalism.  The word humanism floats around this country and this community with all its glory and with all the suspicion attached to it.  We might do well to reclaim this understanding as we continue to revise our religious orientations and as we consider reclaiming religion. 

There is a sense that good religion marked by freedom, accountability, positive regard of humanity, self, personal responsibility contributes to better mental health.  The ability to transcend and include frees people to value what has been and to also choose what is meaningful.  Dissonance either leads to openness and exploration or to increasing tight grip.  Some who become unsure or challenged, become doubly sure. 

A man died in the hospital the other day.  His family was a bit divided on how his death would be marked and honored.  Traditional Catholic expressions or something outside and much closer to his sense and experience of life, spirituality and nature?  There are many religious forms and frameworks.  That is all fine.  My question is how functional they are?  Do they make sense?  Are they relevant and enter into your day to day thinking?  Do they ground you, free you, give you peace of mind, invite you to ease into who you are?  Do they truly comfort you in times of crisis without insulting your intelligence or common sense? Do they encourage you to trust your own authority or does it keep you in a dependency model and attempting to attain impossible perfection through some outmoded redemptive scheme?

Our ability to question, dwelling within a supportive community, being encouraged to take a positive view on life, people, evolution, emergence….to live lives of service and justice – all these contribute to our health.  Silence and laughter, tolerance, mutuality, interfaith are all positive ingredients of good religion all add to your health, your longevity, your sense and experience of being happy.  Good religion frees people and leads to greater overall health –phys, emot, mental.

Begin or continue even now your reflections on your religious scheme…your particular religious orientation that allows you, in part, to sample and see the world, to face other people, other traditions, to see life and death and even yourself.   The second part of this equation is to reflect on where your religious understandings leave you? What do they result in?  We’ve talked of that before when we have discussed beliefs.  Are you lugging images, beliefs, answers from the past that only confuse or no longer make sense?  Is anything from the past contributing to a sense of dis-ease, anxiety and fear?  Of not quite measuring up? 

Reclaim the word religious/religion. Religion broadly is a way of life, a way of thinking, believing and behaving.  A way to face the world.  Religion as part of our overall ideology.

Part of this enterprise and topic is being aware of our religion and ideology and to realize where we are led?  Not for feint of heart.  Let me see your religion and even your religiosity be a fresh blend of all that has gone on before with what you now espouse…what makes sense, what you have tested and taken on in a first hand way.  Let your religion be a framework of understandings that lead to positive and open states of mind and acts of service that ground you, fill you with purposes and deep life satisfactions. 

Might we reclaim a fundamental sense and regard for the dignity, the possibility of the human situation?  Being a humanist is a tough and sometimes confusing designation - perhaps even some here now.  Being a humanist, however, means living with an amazing paradox.  On the one hand humanism allows us to live with greater and greater freedom to be and to do and to create our lives, thoughts and behaviors without theological and doctrinal trappings and constraints.  On the other hand, it means that we deal with greater accountability and responsibility. 

It is actually tougher to abide in this framework.  To identify more questions and quandaries and to forge new understandings that are relevant and honest.  It means moving beyond a dependency model of religion, growing up, standing up with maturity and interdependence.  Trusting in individual and collective authority found and forged in communities such as this. 

Religious orientations matter to mental health and levels of happiness. Those who forge and live in religious systems and identities that incline them to the world rather than create a sense of being at odds with it experience greater satisfaction in life. They live longer and experience much more happiness.  Those who move beyond dependency models experience a greater sense of peace and self-determination away from an anxiety that they never measure up. 

We gather here to be about good religion; to give ourselves, the world, this community and our children a variety of experiences and settings to create newer and fresher and more honorable orientations to the world, to poverty, global situations, to spiritual development.  You do not come here to be reminded how bad you are, how you don’t measure up, how you need certain things to happen to reconciled to a capricious, interventionist god who is watching if you are naughty or nice.  You don’t come here to talk about and decide upon who is in and who is out; who is damned and who is saved according to some elitist, power-based system.  I do believe you come here to be about positive and healthy transformation and to be inspired to face yourselves, your families and this world with greater excitement for life and to be grounded in accepting love. 

This place invites much. It invites an intense level of personal responsibility toward our own growth and faith.  It demands critical thinking; it demands that we open ourselves up to the presence of God within, between and beyond.  This place invites that we become first-generation religious types…Christians, humans, world citizens  -whatever you call yourselves – in light of all we know today and not just asserting or maintaining yesterday’s answers to today’s questions.  If any religious sentiment, belief, image of God is not contributing to your overall sense of well-being, challenge it, transcend it and grow into broader understandings that will empower you to live more fully. 

Go through daily schedule – beginning when you wake up and see with new eyes all that is spiritual, all that is religious.  Ask yourself how you are a ligament, as a religious, salvific agent in the world – with your children, with colleagues, with adversaries, with customers, with your extended family. In joy and discernment, healthy boundaries and unconditional love, proceed into each part of every day with a sense that you are an extension and application of good religion that heals, transforms and invites those around into the most profound satisfactions in life. Amen.