USA Today allots almost a half page every Monday to a discuss of religion and religious issues. This is great. USA Today understands the important role religion plays not only in our culture, but in the global community. Religion is a strong color in the fabric of geo-political life and USA Today rightly provides some specific space in which these issues can be discussed. Good for them.
Last Monday, Andrew Newberg writes a piece called “This is your brain on religion.” He reviews the general premise of other research which suggests that “religion and spiritual practices generally have a positive effect on one’s physical, emotional and neurological health.” I am not sure what he means by “neurological” health, but I can give him that. He goes on to say that his work at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Spirituality and Mind has also revealed that spiritual practices such as meditation and prayer, “also reveal significant improvements in memory, cognition and compassion while simultaneously reducing anxiety, depression, irritability and stress.”
So being religious is a good thing, right?
Not so fast, says Newberg.
Newberg is associate professor of radiology and psychiatry—an interesting marriage of disciplines—at Penn (I’m not sure how this credentializes him as an observer and scholar of religious phenomena), and he argues that “religion’s influence on people depends very much on how they view their God.” He says that when people “view God as loving, forgiving, compassionate and supportive, this more likely results in a very positive view of themselves and the world around them” (my emphasis). But, on the other hand, when God “is viewed as dispassionate, vengeful and unforgiving, this can have deleterious effects on one’s physical and mental health” (emphasis mine).
Then he explains: “The research is clear: if you ruminate on negative emotions, they activate the areas of the brain that are involved in anger, fear and stress … [these] negative emotions can spill over into outward behaviors that generate fear, distrust, hatred, animosity and violence toward people who hold different or opposing beliefs.” With this I cannot argue. Even Jesus said that the actions we do with our hands is derived from the state of affairs in our hearts. So, no offense, but Penn’s research on this is old news.
I don’t have a degree in radiology, but here’s my take on this. Newberg offers a provocative proposition, but it’s flawed in at least one respect. It is not necessary—nor does it happen—that people view and worship God as either a) loving and forgiving, OR b) unloving and unforgiving. It is common to state this dichotomy in terms of the Old Testament God versus the New Testament God. It is quite possible to believe that God is both loving—that is, God shows mercy, and that God can also be unbending—i.e., God exacts justice. These apparently opposing views of God can in fact be held in compatible tension with each other. I wouldn’t want it any other way. The God of Scripture is not my buddy, as Kenneth Woodward, former Religion editor at Newsweek once told me.
I am sure that if I obsess about negative emotions that I might do some bad things. But my defense is not “God made me do it.” Or, “My view of God made me do it.”
Newberg’s Lion King view of positive religious influence is nothing more than hakuna matata: “Don’t worry; be happy.”
Newberg talks about the “negative side of religiosity and spirituality” and wonders how we can “guard against” these things. But what is negative for Newberg—God as a God who is holy, who expects obedience, who has promised that judgment will visit the unrighteous—is not negative for me. The God who is all of those things, is also the God who has offered liberation, forgiveness, mercy and love.
This is a good discussion. In this case, however, I think it’s too easy to say that bad behavior can be traced to a particular view of God.
Bad people do bad things. And someday, God’s going to get them.
And that’s good.
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