Secret 43: Have Faith

The most difficult path to choose in life is the path of the non-believer.  Choosing faith - any faith -  is easier and, according to Sally Beare, better for your health:

A meta-analysis of more than 40 studies published by the American Psychological Association in 2000, which followed over 125,000 people, concluded that going to a place of worship – whether a church, synagogue or mosque – can improve your health and increase your life span by eight years. Another study that Beare quotes shows that believers are 1/3 less likely to die after open-heart surgery. Also, churchgoers tend to be less obese and are more likely to stop drinking alcohol and smoking.

Why would this be?

Several reasons:

• A sense of belonging: worshipping with like-minded people addresses the human need to feel part of a group. A group can offer protection, identity and meaning.
• A sense of meaning. Problems and stresses in life can be explained in the larger context of the religious belief. This may range from the simplistic ‘this happened to you because you angered your god(s)’ (and thus gives you the option to change your behavior to avoid a recurrence of the unwanted incidence) to the more complex ‘you are being tested by your god’. The ability to find meaning in negative events outside of one’s control reduces stress and strengthens immunity.¹  (Of course, when the event is overly stressful and painful, it may lead to the person rejecting the religion and becoming a non-believer. An analogy would be a rubber band that rips).
• Being a member of a religious group gives one immediate social access and reduces feelings of isolation. This is an important factor in a society with a high degree of geographic mobility.
• It provides a system of checks and balances. This also strengthens the feeling of inclusion. Every religion has behavioral guidelines for its members, whether these are dietary (avoidance of pork, adherence to a kosher diet), how people dress (believers wash their feet and women cover up before entering a site of worship) or how they are supposed to interact with one another (do not cheat on your spouse).  Other followers of the same faith will quickly provide feedback to those who fail to follow the rules – ‘if you do not adhere to our standards, you are not included in our group'. Depending on the religion there is more or less leniency. Adhering to the rules rewards you with a sense of belonging. You are not the lone outcast.
• Most religions require giving to charity. When people are told to help others, they focus less on their selfish worries. Replacing self-pity with empathy for others is beneficial for mental health.
• In the Catholic faith the ability to go to confession and ‘restart with a clean slate’ offers a healthy way to reduce anxiety and stress fot the confessor 
• The ability to communicate with a higher power and believe that one’s prayers are being heard reduces the feeling of being powerless. The believer has a sense of being able to influence the outcome and of not being alone in the universe.

Praying at a Shinto temple

The power of prayer plays a significant role in the lives of those who have faith. 

Scientific studies have shown that benefits of prayer include:

• A lowering of heart rate, and indirectly blood pressure
• Reduction in the levels of age-inducing stress hormones

Communal prayer can accelerate recovery – even over distance ². One of the leading experts in the power of prayer is Dr. Larry Dossey. He has conducted experiments that show that patients who are being prayed for recover faster. How this happens exactly is unclear, however, since the side effects of praying are less detrimental than the side effects of taking drugs, why not add this option to a patient’s overall therapy? No side effects, and, no bill!

The most difficult path to choose is that of the non-believer. We are very fortunate, in the Western world, to have the freedom to choose whichever perspective we would like.

Over to you. 

¹Sociologist A. Antonovsky, an Israeli American sociologist who studied the relationship between health, well-being and stress, discovered that Holocaust survivors who believe that life has meaning had a higher survival rate than those who found no meaning. A prime example for the effect of meaning on health is Austrian psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, author of‘Man’s Search for Meaning’.  He lived to 92 years.

² A double-blind study of 400 heart patients conducted at the San Francisco General Hospital found that those patients that were prayed for were off their ventilators sooner and did not need as many antibiotics and other drugs as those patients who were not prayed for. A study of 40 AIDS patients at the California Pacific Medical Center who were, unbeknownst to them, prayed for, needed less medical care than those that were not prayed for. The believers came from a wide range of religions including Judaism, Buddhism and shamanism.