My wife, a nurse, told me a story several years ago about something one of her patients said at the hospital in Ghana where she worked. She was on night duty on a New Year’s Eve when church services were being held all over the country. As is typical in Ghana during such festive periods, every church was packed with worshippers. The patient, a young man, was watching television coverage of the services. According to my wife, as pictures of the overflow crowds scrolled across the screen, the gentleman wondered aloud: “If there are so many Christians in this nation, why do we see so much corruption and all kinds of sinful behaviors in the society?”
The young man was implying that there should be a strong positive association between religiosity and morality. That is not an unreasonable view to hold. Religious teachings are supposed to instill virtues in people of faith. It should follow therefore that the greater the share of a population that practices religion, the more righteous that society should be. It doesn’t always work that way in the real world.
It seems to me that there is an inverse relationship between modernity and morality. I grew up in Ghana in the 1960s and ‘70s. The country was almost uniformly poor during that time and life was hard for most people. But I remember those years fondly. The honesty, kindness and humility that was on display throughout the society helped soften the pain inflicted by the mass poverty. The story is quite a bit different in today’s Ghana. With socio-economic advancement, all of those cherished values appear to be vanishing progressively. Rampant corruption, armed robberies and a host of social ills plague the country.
I have heard similar expressions of nostalgia here in America and in other places where I have lived or spent any meaningful amounts of time. Wherever I have been, I have met people from older generations who look back and wish they had at least some versions of the old days back. There is certainly a lot to be thankful for in our current world where technological, medical and other scientific advancements have made life a lot safer and more comfortable than it was previously. But should those positive developments inevitably displace the principles that most of us held so dear? I don’t think so.
When my wife told me that story, I had just returned to Ghana after completion of my studies in the Soviet Union. I lived in the Soviet Union for six years and got to know the society quite well. Religion played almost no role in it. The Communist Party suppressed all forms of religious activity so the small minority of the population that was nonsecular was forced to worship underground.
Even with that near-total absence of religion in their society, I found ordinary Soviets to be among the best human beings I had come across anywhere. The vast majority of my Soviet classmates and the people I met on the streets and elsewhere in the country always displayed the types of virtues—including kindness, honesty and humility—that I have admired throughout my life. I frequently struggled to understand how the authorities managed to recruit individuals from such a benevolent population and turn them into the monsters who administered the Soviet Gulag. It has since served as a constant reminder for me that even the best souls are susceptible to manipulation and various forms of temptation.
I have met many Soviets here in America. Some of them have been graduate school classmates, friends and work colleagues. The vast majority of them have always displayed the same positive character traits as their compatriots that I interacted with inside the Soviet Union.
Religion, in my view, does an excellent job of teaching many of the basic principles that all people should aspire to live by. Through social and other codes of conduct, secular societies, like the Soviet Union that I experienced, manage to propagate some of those same values to their populations. From what I have learned, what makes a society virtuous is how well its people put into practice the principles they are taught. Based on the young man’s observation in the hospital ward on that New Year’s Eve, he clearly didn’t think that most Ghanaians were passing that test.
Throughout my life, I have always been in church, but I have never considered myself religious. Rather, I see myself as spiritual, someone who has a personal connection with God, or what some may call a higher power. I believe people should practice moral and honest values that help make society great.
What I have realized over time is that going to church does not necessarily mean people practice what they are taught. This disconnect has been troubling to me. If you do not try to practice what you learn from religious organizations, including the Church, you are deceiving yourself. It is like a person who looks at themselves in the mirror and then immediately forgets what they look like once they step away.
I believe this is a message to the Church as a whole. The world is watching the religious community, and therefore believers must practice what they learn. Otherwise, it is a complete waste of time.
That is my two pence, and thank you for the blog.
Very well said, Moses. I fully agree with your thinking. Thanks for reading and commenting.