Enough Is Enough Series

Is Religion Good for Society?

When preparing this message, I came across a survey conducted by the NCLS (or National Church Life Survey) that was released in November 2019. This survey has been conducted among 20 different denominations every five years since 1991, and surveys several thousand Australians.

Among the questions asked were things like:

"Have you been to church in the last year?"

"Does your mother, your father, your spouse, or children go to church?"

But here's the question that stood out:

“Do you think that religion is good for society?”

And to be honest, the results surprised me.

~40 percent said that they thought religion is good for society. And on the surface that's awesome, right?

Only about 20 percent did not think so.

The remaining 40 percent had no definite thoughts on the question.

At the time of the survey (these numbers have probably shifted some since then), that 20 percent figure of people who didn't think religion was good for society corresponds pretty close to the number of Australians who identified themselves as “atheists.” So really, that result on the survey makes sense, and while I don't love seeing that, obviously, I can deal with that. What I want to focus on was the two 40 percent figures — which if we combine them, means that 80 percent of Australians seemed to be either neutral or positive toward “religion.”

That seems encouraging, right? 80% of the country is either just indifferent to religion or think that it's a benefit toward society. That's pretty solid!

It'd be easy, as a Christian, to be really encouraged by that. When I first read it, I thought, "Oh wow! Perhaps Australians are pretty open minded to the Gospel. That's great!"

But here's the thing that troubled me. It's with the survey question itself. It's that word religion that I believe skewed the results. One commentator said that the question was "a massive lie that most respondents seem to have swallowed." Pretty strong language.

I'd imagine that whoever wrote that question probably had in mind a modern/secular, view of “religion.” Giving them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they just meant generally harmless things that many religions share. Things like going to church, a mosque, synagogue, or temple from time to time, occasionally praying, reading Scripture, and so on.

But where this question starts to take a turn is when we consider that “religion” can involve (for the sake of the argument I'm going to be extreme here) things like child sacrifice. It's not really a stretch to say that some “religions” contain very bad stuff. I don't know that given that question, I could answer that “religion,” in the general all-encompassing definition is necessarily good for society. Christianity, of course, but definitely not “religion” as such.

And yet, we saw that 40 percent of Australians said “Yes.” I know what you are thinking. "Well, you're just focusing on Australia. What does that have to do with us?" Maybe you are right.

So let's zoom out. There is a widespread view in today’s world that “religion” is simply a matter of taste. That it's just an aspect of “culture,” like music, or food. In this age of unchecked open-mindedness, no one should be critical of another person’s “religion,” any more than we should judge people for liking certain foods - even if it is pineapple on pizza, which is objectively wrong. There's a place and time for pineapple and there's a place and time for pizza. I don't need an acidic fruit co-mingling with bread and cheese. Hawaiian pizza isn't even Hawaiian. It came from Canada. Anyway, I'm done.

Getting back on track, there's this thought in societies who have a bunch of different cultures that everyone is supposed to be completely open-minded and should just welcome and appreciate the many “religions” that belong to the different cultural backgrounds of our people. We should just let people believe what they want to believe and if it isn't hurting anyone, what's the harm? Because unless that's a belief in Christ, it is hurting someone - themselves. I'm sure you've all heard opinions and phrases like that before, because it's very widely believed.

See I bring all of this up, because last week, Pastor Josh did an amazing job of setting the stage for this encounter of Elijah and the prophets of Baal. This narrative which actually poses a fundamental challenge for a world that could ask such an insane question like, “Do you think that religion is good for society?”

That's because today we're not talking about a story of “religious tolerance.” We're not even talking about a story of “freedom of religion.”

The story we're talking about is much, much, more important than that.

Preparation of the Altars

It's in our text today that the people of Israel and the prophets of Ba'al meet the God of Israel. That sentence alone gives me chills. They meet the God of Israel on Mount Carmel. Wow.