ROLE OF RELIGION IN TODAY’S SOCIETY

Author:  Dr Indarjit Singh

ROLE OF RELIGION IN TODAY’S SOCIETY
Talk given to the Nottingham Medico-Chirurgical Society 6 December 2006

It’s a real pleasure joining you this evening to talk about the role of religion in society. Not an easy subject these days. In a recent opinion poll, more than 70% of those questioned felt religion was simply a source of conflict!

The founders of our great religions thought differently. They saw us as we really are: imperfect beings prone to irrational prejudice, selfishness and not infrequently, appalling behaviour to our fellow humans. They saw religion as the stressing of ethical principles to move us to more responsible living. Not easy.

Let me first talk about irrational prejudices that often lead to conflict. I’ll begin with a true story. Some 20 years ago, I worked in the London office a large civil engineering contractor We were located on the 7th floor of an 8 storey building.

We were home civil engineers and above us were the international civil engineers. They saw themselves as superior people with stickers of Seychelles, Hong Kong or other exotic places on their brief cases.

At the end of the day we would head to the lift and as the lift door opened, those inside, the superior people from the 8th floor, would stick their stomachs out a little to give the impression that the lift was fuller than it was. Undeterred, we’d barge in, and the 8th floor stomachs would grudgingly recede. We were now all civil engineers, working for the same Company.

When the lift reached the 4th floor, inhabited by the lowest of the low, the Department of Health and Social Security, we would mutter ‘cripples, why can’t they walk down a few flights of stairs’? As the lift door opened, we would stick out our stomachs to deter this lower form of life entering our lift.

Undeterred, these civil servants and bureaucrats, who did nothing but drink tea all day long, would get into our lift. Grudgingly, we pull back our stomachs and we all went down to the ground floor, where we got out, all differences forgotten, until the next day.

We see the same sort of behaviour in attitudes to immigration when fairly recent newcomers join with the majority in expressing concern about a flood of people from eastern Europe and worse, ‘asylum seekers, who in turn , will also object to others trying to come into our country Curiously, this distrust of others, adds to our sense of belonging and unity Let me introduce you to Indarjit’s law: that when two or more people find sufficient in common to call themselves ‘us’, they will find a ‘them’, to look down on, to strengthen their sense of unity.

You see this in a milder form with conflict between football supporters, but, all too easily, it can lead to active hatred of whole communities. I saw a reminder of this on a visit to Auschwitz in Poland. While going round the former concentration camp, I saw the still visible results of manufactured hatred against the Jews.
A few years ago, I did some work for Amnesty International, looking at
genocide and human rights abuse in a number of different countries; abuse which often involved unbelievable depravity. Almost as bad as the abuse, was the realisation that those who we learn to trust are often the perpetrators: police and soldiers, and, even worse, priests and teachers and previously friendly neighbours. Why do people behave in such ways?

The sobering conclusion, central to my talk, is that our human family has only a thin veneer of civilisation that differentiates us from those we call savages; a veneer that is all too easily shed at times when we are persuaded to see others as lesser beings.
I remember as a small boy, seeing filmed footage of the liberation of the
Belsen concentration camp by British soldiers. The grotesque sight of emaciated and distorted bodies, and living skeletons is seared in my memory. In my innocence, along with many others, I believed that the Nazi atrocities, like those at Auschwitz, Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps, were a one off unique act of human madness.
Today we know differently. Since the second world war, we have, just to
give a few examples, witnessed the brutal killing of more than a million
civilians by the Kymer Rouge in Cambodia, ethnic cleansing in former
Yugoslavia and genocide in Rwanda and many parts of the world. Today we are stunned by evidence of sadistic behaviour and widespread atrocities by coalition soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The key feature, the common feature, of all these atrocities, is the use of
fear, prejudice, jealousy or ignorance of others, to play on our baser
passions, in a way that triggers, and almost rationalises irrational
behaviour.
It's important to remember that when we were looking with
loathing at racist behaviour in Germany, the word ‘Jew’, was a common
term of abuse in this Country. Today words like ‘extremist, ‘fanatic and ‘terrorist’, carry the same dehumanising potential.

Goulding, in his book 'Lord of the Flies', about a group of children
marooned on a remote island, puts forward a thesis that without moral and ethical guidance, children, and by implication, adults, gravitate to less
civilised behaviour. It is a disturbing view that unfortunately, has the ring
of truth.
It's not only so on remote or mythical islands, or in distant countries. We see such behaviour in this country, in for example, the murder of an old lady for the few coins in her handbag, or in appalling crimes against children.
The reality of human nature, and the evidence is all around us, is that we
humans do not come with preloaded software of right, wrong and
responsibility. Decent responsible behaviour has to taught and learnt. The
question is, who should do the teaching?

Many would argue that the claim of our different religions to guide us to better human behaviour has proved false, and religions are themselves frequently the cause of conflict. And, in many senses, they are right. The problem is that the ethical teachings of our different faiths, are extremely easy to state, but difficult to live by. It is hard to put others before self; it is hard to forgive. Lust and greed have their attractions. So we develop surrogates for true religious teachings. If, once a week, we sing words of ethical guidance in beautiful hymns and chants, perform rituals, build beautiful places of worship, fast and go on pilgrimages, we can convince ourselves, that we are following religious teachings.

Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh faith was not too impressed with such practices. He taught:
Pilgrimages, austerities and ritual acts of giving or compassion
Are in themselves, not worth a grain of sesame seed
It’s living true to ethical imperatives that count.


At a time of feuding between Hindus and Muslims over superiority of belief, the Guru said in his very first sermon:
Na koi Hindu; na koi Mussalman

That is in God’s eyes, there is neither Hindu nor Muslim, and by today’s extension, neither Christian, Sikh nor Jew. That is, God is not interested in our different religious labels, but in the way we conduct ourselves.

What about the accusation that religion itself is a cause of conflict? If we look about us at the world today, it would be hard to disagree, but, is it religion, or misuse of the power of organised religion and its hold on people that is at fault.? I can take hold of a Bible, or other holy book, and hit someone on the head hard enough to kill them. But would the contents of the holy book be in any way to blame? The reality is that throughout history, false loyalty to religious groupings, as opposed to religious principles, has been used by the power hungry to gain power and authority. The history of the spread of different religions has little to do with serious study of different beliefs.

Religious leaders, have over the years, created structures of power and privilege to enhance their authority and emphasise the uniqueness and superiority of their approach to God, while rubbishing that of others. When children argue in this way that they, or their dad are bigger, stronger or better in some way than others, the end result is always physical conflict, and it’s the same with adults and religions with claims that our way is the only true way, or that ours is the final revelation, or my God is superior to yours; a claim frequently made by abrahamic religions.

If this sort of bigotry makes people question religion, so does the frequent hypocrisy of those in religious authority. We all know too well, the truth of in Shakespeare’s words about ‘ungracious’ pastors, who ‘show others the steep and thorny way to heaven, while themselves, the primrose path of dalliance tread’. How, for centuries, leaders of religion with privileged life styles, would lecture their flock on the virtue of poverty and deprivation, as a way to reaping rich reward in the hereafter. The result of such attitudes and behaviour by those in authority, has been a predictable moving away from religion

The vacuum created by the reduced influence of religion was quickly filled by the pursuit of material wealth. Society rightly rejected the so-called religious view that taught spiritual improvement and at the same time countenance poverty, disease and suffering. Unfortunately, the
pendulum has swung too far and mankind is engaged in seeking happiness and contentment through the blind pursuit of material happiness to the neglect of the spiritual side of life.

To me as a Sikh, much of the unhappiness in the world today stems from a basic failure to recognise that life has both spiritual and material dimensions, and if we neglect either of these, it will be to our ultimate neglect. This fundamental truth has long been recognised by our religious
founders. Christ taught that man should not live by bread alone. He recognised the importance of bread - of the material side- but taught that there was more, much more to life than mere material existence.

Guru Nanak once met a very rich miser who constantly/boasted about his wealth. The proud man would put up a flag outside his mansion every time he amassed a million rupees, and there were lots and lots of flags outsiders house. The miser said to the Guru that he had made it in this world, how could he ensure his passage to heaven. The Guru gave the miser a needle, telling him that if he took it with him it would guarantee his passage to heaven, (yes, the needle stories in our different faiths, if you excuse the pun, have a common thread). The miser ran home to his wife to tell her of the Guru's gift and she laughed at him, and then he realised he could take nothing, with him to the next world.

On another occasion, the Guru gently chided some so-called holy men who had left their families to go in the wilderness in search of God. The Guru told them that God was not to be found in the wilderness but in their homes in looking to the needs of their families and others around them.
The Guru taught that we should live like the lotus flower, which having its roots in muddy waters, still flowers beautifully above. Similarly Sikhs should live and world for the benefit of society, but should always be above it meanness and pettiness.

The reality of life in Britain today, and what President Bush would call the civilised world, is that the balance between the spiritual and material has become heavily skewed to the material. Religion has been pushed to the margins of society, and has blindly acquiesced in the call to keep religion out of politics. To me as a Sikh it's like keeping ethical direction cut of politics. For true contentment and for genuine social justice, ethical imperatives taught by religion, must underpin and direct political action.

Today in our preoccupation with things material, we have forgotten the importance of balance between material and spiritual and, as a result, have previously unheard of prosperity side by side with escalating crime, rising alcoholism and drug dependency, loneliness, the homeless and broken homes and other disturbing evidence of social disintegration.

We have also become, , a society obsessed with self and the short-term. How can we move to more long- term considerations? How can we make ours a more cohesive and caring society. Voluntary effort and increasingly government and other statutory effort are becoming more alert to social ills in our society. But in focussing on problems, rather than more holistically on causes, we sometime tend to look through the wrong end of the telescope, and seek to treat spots and sores of social maladies, rather than look further to underlying causes.
If problems resulting from drug abuse take up too much police time, the call is legalise their use and free the police, rather than question why the use of drugs has risen so dramatically. A few days back, a senior police officer suggested heroin addicts should be given supplies of the drug to reduce shoplifting to fund a drug habit. Increasing alcohol abuse? Let's extend or abolish licensing hours to spread the incidence of drunken or loutish and drunken behaviour. Result, as we’ve been hearing this week, a year after the relaxation of licensing laws.a huge rise in binge drinking. Too many people ending up in prison? Lets curb sentencing powers. Extend this thinking, of looking to the wrong end of a problem, to the behaviour of little junior who greets visitors to the house by kicking them in the shins. Solution: issue said visitors with shin pads as they enter the front door!

The ethical teachings of religion help us address the underlying causes of irresponsible behaviour.Religion takes us away from obsession with self , to active concern for others. As Guru Nanak taught, where self exists there is no God, where God exists there is no self. Or as a Christian theologian put it' it's the ‘I’ in the middle of 'sin' that makes it Sin.
Religion is fundamentally different from civics or citizenship in that it frequently challenges unthinking social norms. which, seen in a wider view, can sometimes be unjust and oppressive.

Sikhs believe that our different religions should take the lead in addressing the real causes of our social ills - starting with the role of the family. We see marriage, fidelity and the family as central to the health and well being of society. It is easy to allow understanding, compassion and support for those in different situations to blind us to the importance of an ideal. TV comedy in which infidelity is seen as something of a giggle, blinds us to the hurt that transient, adult relationships, can cause to children.
A short true story makes the point better than any words of mine.
Two small boys were fighting, hammer and tongs in the school playground. With great difficulty, a teacher finally managed to prise the two apart demanding to know what it was all about. Looking at the teacher, with eyes swollen with tears, one of the children said it was because the others dad had taken his mum away.
While we should not condemn those who chose different lifestyles, there is a need for clearer highlighting of responsibility and the benefits of stable family relations. Both those in political life and leaders of faith communities have much to do here.

While ethical or religious direction is clearly desirable in tackling social issues, it is even more necessary in adjusting to new challenges arising from the exponential growth in scientific discovery, particularly in the field of medicine.

It’s important to look at the massive changes in scientific progress, and the huge advances in clinical techniques which medical practitioners patients and wider society have had to take in their stride in recent years, with whole families of new drugs, scanners and new imaging techniques, transplants and the development of genetic understanding and much else. New aids to our continuing quest for a longer and healthier life.

Speaking from a personal experience, until about a couple of years ago, I served as a lay member of the BMA Medical Ethics Committee. I was amazed at the constant stream of complex, major ethical issues arising out of new discoveries and new procedures. Let me list just some of the issues that exercised our minds, to give an indication of the need for new thinking, new learning, and the constant questioning of ethical boundaries derived from religious or from social morality. They are in no particular order.

1.Advance Directives, or Living Wills
2. Genetic testing where there is a family history of genetic disorder, implications for insurance, genetic screening of populations.
3. Making Decisions on Behalf of Mentally Incapacitated Adults
4. The Ethics of Xenotransplantation.
5.The Meaning of Informed Consent.
6.Consent for the Collection, Storage and Use of Gamates
7.Ethical Issues in ITU.
8.Medical attitudes to abortion—You’ll be aware of a recent proposal for reducing the number of doctors required for consent from two to one.
9. Physician Assisted Suicide and spouse or family assisted suicide of a patient suffering a major diminution in quality of life.

More recently we have become all too aware that funding for health care with the high cost of some newer treatments cannot meet full demand, particularly with greater longevity and an increasing number of elderly. We now have to face new ethical dilemmas of looking to priorities in treatment between different illnesses and patient categories.

Alongside major medical advances, there have also been huge changes in society itself, and it is impossible to understand the problems, challenges and opportunities of today’s Health Service, without look at and understanding the nature and magnitude of these social changes, and building them into the equation of our quest for better health for all.

We can only increase the share of our gross GDP for health and social need by reducing that spent in other areas The huge spending on arms is one such area. In the world of the 21st century we need the ethical teachings of religion to help move the world from 19th century power politics and spheres of influence to an understanding of common interests and aspirations of different members of our one human family.

Let me sum up. Religion can help us move to more enlightened and responsible thinking but first we need to question attitudes and values that have arisen from an unthinking smugness that we humans are so clever that we do not need ethical direction.
The 20th century was one of unbelievable scientific achievement and a growing smugness in our ability to almost play God. It was also a century in which man killed more of his fellow beings than in the rest of recorded history. The dominant creed was that individual happiness is all that really matters, and that this could be acquired through material wealth.
Today we are in a more sombre mood. We realise we have done almost irreparable damage to our environment and we live in a dangerously unstable world of gross inequalities of wealth and opportunity, and a continuing denial of basic human rights in much of the world.

In ‘do it yourself’ activity, there is a saying that when all else fails,
look at the instructions. In life, religion provides us instructions for sane,
balanced and responsible living, and having made a mess of our ‘do it
yourself efforts, I feel it is important that we now look at our books of
instructions. Not at religious structures, but at actual ethical teachings.

Unfortunately these sane and highly practical teachings have become almost obscured by false practices. Today there is an urgent need for the discarding of rituals, superstitions and dated customs and practices that have nothing to do with teachings. Practices that here over years become falsely attached to religion and simply serve to distort teachings. Practices and customs that have no relevance to life today.

At the same time, Religions themselves, have to knock down the false barriers of belief and exclusivity between different faiths. When, in the course of redevelopment, a building is demolished in a familiar area, we see the surrounding landscape in a quite different light. In the same way, when false barriers of bigotry are demolished through dialogue and understanding, we will see our different religions as they really are: overlapping circles of belief, in which the area of overlap is much greater than the smaller area of difference In that area of overlap, we find common values of tolerance, compassion and concern for social justice: values necessary for an all-too clever world that at times, mesmerised by the pursuit of material happiness, seems to be drifting dangerously, without ethical direction.

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