Is Christian faith a crutch?
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| Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, smoking cigar. Español: Sigmund Freud, fundador del psicoanálisis, fumando. Česky: Zakladatel psychoanalýzy Sigmund Freud kouří doutník. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
“I don’t need your religion,” hearers of the Christian message sometimes reply. “That’s just a crutch for those who are too weak to cope with life on their own.” So goes one of the most frequently heard objections to the faith. How should we respond?
The roots of this response go back to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Many of the leading thinkers of that period were skeptical as to the existence of God. But as means of travel improved and Westerners began to move about the world, an undeniable truth began to make itself clear—there was religious activity everywhere. Man, it seemed, was incurably religious. This presented a problem for the atheistic heirs of the Enlightenment. They were confident in saying that God did not exist, but belief in a divine being seemed nearly universal. To explain this phenomenon, they settled on the idea that people invent religion out of a need for something to help them cope with the difficulties of life. Thus, religion was and is born out of psychological need or weakness. This theory runs through much of the literature of leading nineteenth century atheists, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. Marx may have put it best in his famous line, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” He was saying that religion is a narcotic that dulls the senses and gives relief from pain and anxiety.
As Freud pointed out, primitive religions sometimes do appear to have been attempts to deal with natural threats. Primitive people would personalize impersonal forces of nature, imagining that spirits lived in storms, earthquakes, and floods. Then they would pray to these spirits and make sacrifices to them lest they cause harm.
Did the Judeo-Christian faith originate for similar reasons? Did people invent a personal God to explain and tame a fearsome impersonal world? Some would say yes, but they must answer one major question: Why would the “inventors” of God conceive of Him as holy? Yes, we’re afraid of the forces of nature, but nothing compares to the terror evoked by the presence of a holy God. This is why the disciples were fearful when the winds arose on the Sea of Galilee, but when they saw Jesus calm the storm they “feared exceedingly.” Even more than a storm or earthquake, God cannot be controlled.
Yes, God helps us in our weaknesses; in that sense He is a “crutch.” But we cannot control Him, for He does what He pleases. It is those who seek to depersonalize God, to strip Him of His holiness, who are looking for a crutch, for they are trying to tame the object of their fears. Tell those who object to Christianity about the holiness of God.
