Evangelist Billy Graham wisely said, “When we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of God.”
In this time of rising depression and suicidal despair, it seems many in Generation Z reached this point, with a new study showing a rising share of young adults have religious faith.
About one-third of 18- to 25-year-olds say they believe in the existence of God or a higher power.
This is up from about one-quarter in 2021, noted The Wall Street Journal’s Clare Ansberry, writing on polling data from the Springtide Research Institute.
Ansberry reported that in the age of COVID-fueled isolation and canceled dreams, young adults, theologians and church leaders “attribute the increase in part to the need for people to believe in something beyond themselves after three years of loss.”
As a recovered agnostic baptized in December 2017, I’m not surprised. God is in the healing business.
Data illustrate the public-health benefits of faith.
Women who attend religious services at least once a week are 68% less likely to die from “deaths of despair,” including suicide, drug overdose and alcohol poisoning.
Men are 33% less likely, according to 2020 research led by Harvard University’s School of Public Health.
Elite economists in January released a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper showing states with pronounced drops in religious attendance saw sharper upticks in deaths of despair and vice versa.
It’s no wonder the 12-step program, one of the most successful strategies for breaking drug and alcohol addiction, centers its methodology on belief in a higher power.
Phil Zuckerman, a Pitzer College professor and associate dean, noted that while America is generally secularizing, it’s “quite religious” compared with most other wealthy countries: “Fifty-five percent of Americans, for example, say they pray daily, compared to an average of 22% of Europeans.”
Militant atheist Karl Marx wrongly claimed religion was “opium of the masses,” used to dull the pain of everyday people trapped in oppression.
In truth, people of faith are more likely to challenge poverty and despair than nonbelievers.
American Christians are more likely to adopt a child, volunteer and contribute to charity than secular people.
Religious people are at the forefront of fighting global human trafficking, and Graham’s charity, the Samaritan’s Purse, is the tip of the spear in disaster response.
Samaritan’s Purse quickly moves to provide food, water, shelter, medicine and other relief worldwide for people suffering crises, disasters and wars.
From soup kitchens to hospitals and schools for indigent children, the Catholic Church is a global force for good.
Brilliant theologian Tim Keller also disagrees with Marx, arguing that in taking human form and suffering a violent death, Jesus showed how God cares for the physical realm.
Marx charges that religion “is a sedative that makes people passive toward injustice because there will be ‘pie in the sky bye and bye.’ That may be true of some religions that teach people that this material world is unimportant or illusory,” Keller wrote in his book “The Prodigal God.”
“Christianity, however, teaches that God hates the suffering and oppression of this material world so much, he was willing to get involved in it and to fight against it. Properly understood, Christianity is by no means the opiate of the people. It’s more like the smelling salts.”
That’s not to say religious people haven’t committed atrocities — they have, from pedophile priests and pastors to bankrupting televangelists.
But as Springtide’s research notes, young people are realizing God is not human-run religion.
After suffering childhood and young-adult religious abuse and spending nearly 12 years as an agnostic, it took me tortuous time and effort to believe in a God who existed and wasn’t vengeful or indifferent.
Even now as a practicing Christian, I see frequent examples of the wrenching pain inflicted by religious people in God’s name.
My faith in God is now unshaken by the heinous actions of “religious” people.
Evil deeds done in God’s name are like a knockoff Gucci purse with a big fake “G.”
Clearly a false, flimsy imitation.
My hope is that believers from all faiths show greater empathy and instill higher emotional awareness for the suffering of others, especially those wounded by human-run religion.
Most of all, I hope young people continue to grow in their awareness of our loving Creator.
Carrie Sheffield is author of the memoir “Motorhome Prophesies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness,” forthcoming from Hachette Book Group.
