The Two Faces of God: Faith Between Hope and Intimidation

Whether religious belief does a person good depends entirely on whether it offers them hope — or whether it is wielded against them as a tool of intimidation in the service of those who seek power.

Traditional Faith and Established Religiosity

Traditional faith and established religiosity are having a difficult time at the moment. On the one hand, the esoteric scene is booming, and many people are seeking guidance in more or less absurd belief systems — from astrology and tarot reading to aura-soma, Bach flower remedies, crystal therapy and shamanism. On the other hand, the major religions have long since lost their innocence. For many people today, established religions have become a double-edged sword: on the one side, they offer genuine psychological support and help — not only in times of crisis — to a considerable number of people; on the other, acts of suicide bombing and religious warfare are carried out in their name, and sexual abuse of children has flourished — and continues to flourish — beneath their cover. What meaning does religiosity hold today? And how does one approach the subject of faith and religion from a position of reasoned doubt?

Just 65 years ago (1960), the proportion of people with no church affiliation stood at a mere 4 percent. By 2023, 40 percent of the German population identified as having no religious denomination. Each year, approximately 800,000 members leave Germany's two major churches. In both cases, dissatisfaction with the institution of the Church itself is the primary driving factor (51.9 percent in 2021). There are minor differences in the reasons given by former Catholics — here, the main factors appear to be a backlog of overdue reforms and a loss of credibility among church leadership. Among those who were previously Protestant, an equally significant reason is the desire to avoid the church tax. Overall, only 17 percent of Germans are now "highly integrated church members" — meaning regular church attendance, active engagement in the parish community, daily prayer, confession, and so on.

One could say cynically: there is only one God — but ever fewer people believe in him. According to a survey by the Stiftung Friedensdialog, 61 percent of Germans consider religion "not important" or "not important at all" (Stern, 29 December 2022, p. 67).

A Secular Decade? If this trend continues, we will soon arrive at what the Giordano Bruno Foundation calls the "secular decade": if current trajectories are maintained, the majority of Germans will shortly have no religious denomination. The Central Council of the Non-Denominational (KORSO) is attempting to create a collective home for all those without religious affiliation — a coalition of secular and atheist associations whose goal is to represent the interests and rights of those who belong to no religious community, including at a political level.

For Germany officially remains a secular state. Yet in reality, the two major churches continue to exert enormous influence over many political decisions — whether the issue is abortion, assisted dying, ethics education in place of religious instruction, or the churches' special labour laws. In all these areas, the major churches make their influence felt, more or less covertly.

The Bertelsmann Religion Monitor, published in December 2022 under the title "The Future of the Churches — Between Loss of Significance and Repositioning in a Pluralistic Society", paints a bleak picture for both major denominations. Not only are the numbers of those who have already left the Church extremely high, but the number intending to leave is also at a record level. A further erosion of religious socialisation is expected. Today, many people live by the motto: "You can believe without the Church."

The Question of Meaning

Although fewer and fewer people are turning to the two traditional religious communities, the need for orientation, meaning and structure remains strong — and is growing in uncertain times such as these. What can we know, and what must we believe? For many, the ready-made belief systems offered by religion no longer provide satisfying answers. The churches' responses —"Jesus is the answer… what was your question again?"— and the off-the-shelf meaning systems that religions provide simply no longer suffice for many reflective people today. Genuine searching for and finding of meaning is, all too often, a protracted process. Since the two major churches now offer little that is credible or relevant to most Germans when it comes to questions of meaning, many people — particularly in times of crisis — look elsewhere. The esoteric scene and the psychological self-help market have thus become attractive sources of answers for some.

But serious psychotherapy is also sought out for this reason. Because many people assume they will not be fobbed off with pre-formed doctrines, quite a few seek out psychologists and psychotherapists — not only for psychological or physical illness, but also in search of meaning. Especially once the clinically significant symptoms have largely been addressed, questions of meaning tend to surface toward the end of psychotherapeutic processes:Who am I? Where do I come from? What am I doing with my life? What gives my life meaning? How do I find meaning? How do I cope with crises of meaning? From what sources do I draw meaning?

Sometimes the path to self-knowledge and understanding of the world is full of detours and difficulties, full of risk — with highs and lows, uncertainties and unsettlements. Precisely when psychologists and psychotherapists accompany people through their crises, it is important that they themselves have come to a degree of peace with their own life history and have already grappled with certain fundamental philosophical questions. Only then are they capable of accompanying patients in difficult situations without prejudice — without needing to use the patient's suffering as fuel to process their own unresolved conflicts. This is why personal self-experience and self-reflection are so essential in psychotherapeutic training, alongside theoretical and practical components.

"You are closer to God when you ask a question than when you give an answer."— Jewish wisdom

The Offerings of Religion: Resources and Limitations— Whether one seeks and finds meaning in the churches and their religious offerings depends on several factors — among them the environment in which one grew up, the family, the village, the city, the culture. In Germany, at least in the West, most people were still born into a religion, absorbed it virtually with their mother's milk, and integrated it — more or less successfully — into their lives over time. When things go well, faith becomes part of one's life, an integrated worldview — helpful, and capable of supporting personal development.

It becomes problematic when faith functions as a lived introject — festering within a person like a thorn in the flesh — and cannot be integrated, because conflicts have arisen in the course of a personal life history with the religious belief system that was instilled in the individual by family, school or society. Such conflicts require conscious — usually psychotherapeutic — processing.

The Dizziness of Freedom— We all carry within us a tension between two conflicting needs. On the one hand, we have a desire for autonomy, freedom, independence, self-affirmation and self-realisation. On the other, there is the need for security — for being held within a meaningful larger whole, in which we can trustingly let go of ourselves.

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard called this inner conflict the"dizziness of freedom."This internal tension accompanies us throughout our lives: at times the need for autonomy and freedom predominates; at others, the need for security, safety and a sense of being held. At its core, it is a kind of internal risk assessment. On the one hand, many young people say:"No risk, no fun."On the other, many of us — particularly in times of crisis — find our knees trembling, and long for what some have called a"benevolent dependency"on credible authorities. And it is precisely here that priests and religions come into play. We search for trustworthy individuals and institutions that can convey to us the sense that everything is manageable, that things will turn out well, and that life has meaning. One could say it is a longing for basic trust in an era battered by crisis.

The Ground Crew of God — Credible Authorities?In many myths, fairy tales and legends, there is a longing for these credible authorities. The ability to look up to someone, to admire a person who appears to know better and to offer orientation — this is a childlike, regressive need. What manifests in everyday life as a cult of celebrity — pop stars, film icons, football heroes — finds its equivalent in religion in the mystical elevation of priests to figures who supposedly — or only in the imagination of the faithful — have a direct line to higher beings. Sometimes it is God or a saint, a religious leader, or even the Pope — who is not infrequently described as the"Holy Father"and as"God's representative on earth."In other cultures, it might be a guru or Brahmin, a rabbi or mullah, a shaman or the Dalai Lama.

Charisma

Institutional Charisma and Personal Charisma— Central to all of this is typically the personal relationship: the believer must regard the relevant priest as credible and competent, and must trust them. When this is achieved, one becomes open to that person's support, messages and insights. When it works, it can genuinely help the believer.

However: not every priest is automatically trustworthy to every believer simply by virtue of holding the office ("institutional charisma"). Whether one feels genuinely held and secure — and is therefore open to receiving guidance — depends far more on personal credibility and the quality of the interpersonal relationship.

Paternalistic Care— Take the example of the Catholic Church: there, priests are regarded as intermediaries between God and the faithful. In order to protect their congregations from the seven deadly sins — pride, greed, lust, wrath, gluttony, envy and sloth — and to keep the flock together, priests are fond of offering their congregations orientation and prescribing how they should live:"This is how you shall live — this is permitted — and this is not."On one level, this concerns adherence to the ethical rules of the Ten Commandments: do not lie, do not steal, no adultery, no murder or manslaughter — rules which most people do, in fact, follow.

On another level, the specifically religious rules play an ever-diminishing role: daily prayer, Sunday worship, confession after sinful behaviour, and so on — these now feature consistently in the daily lives of very few people in our part of the world. Most people in Western societies have long since moved on from these religious prescriptions.

The result is that a considerable portion of the population feels profoundly ambivalent about membership of the religious community in which they were raised — a situation clearly reflected in the church exit figures cited above.

"All religions appear divine to the ignorant, useful to politicians, and ridiculous to philosophers."— Lucretius (98–55 BC, Roman poet)

Faith — What Is It?

The wordfaithcarries both a religious and an everyday dimension. In everyday life, it refers to the fundamental readiness to accept a particular state of affairs as true without having examined or been able to examine it. One might say: faith is certainty without proof.

Since individual faith is something highly subjective, and since God cannot be directly observed and in all probability cannot be proved, this applies to religion as well. In the religious sphere in particular, faith is most helpful when the religious worldview has been well integrated. It then becomes a form of"basic trust"— capable of providing security and simplifying life.

Faith and religion can, however, also become problematic — for example, when they were conveyed to a child or young person not appropriately but through pressure and coercion. In such cases, faith becomes an unwelcomeintrojectthat cannot be integrated, because conflicts exist — and continue to exist — between the individual's personal life history and the religious belief system.

"Religions are like glowworms: they need darkness in order to shine."— Arthur Schopenhauer

Faith: "Faith" and "Belief"— The German wordGlaube(faith/belief) is rendered in English by two very different terms. A distinction is drawn betweenfaithandbelief.Faithrefers to trust in God in the sense of a general, foundational and formative force of human existence — what one might describe as the"basic trust"mentioned above, which is identically present across all longer-established religions in all cultures and at all times. When one is able to keep this undogmatic dimension of religion in view, religion can be healing.Belief, by contrast, refers to the specific doctrinal content and propositions of individual religions. These are highly shaped by culture and by the spirit of the age in which they arose — and are more or less meaningful. This is where different religions diverge radically from one another, providing the backdrop for innumerable religious conflicts and wars, all following the logic of:"Only we possess the true faith, and we must convert you. By force if necessary. For if you are not willing, then we will use violence."In this way, religions can, in the worst case, become tools of warfare.

The Truth Sometimes Goes Under — But It Does Not Die

Religiosity— Religiosity refers primarily to the highly individual experience and practice of faith within a given religion, placing its emphasis on the intrapsychic processing of the external belief system — what takes place on the"inner stage."This form is also known as"intrinsic religiosity."Personal religiosity frequently stems from a desire to find meaning, to explain the world, and to trace inexplicable phenomena back to an intelligible cause. Religiosity is subject to a complex neurobiological and psychological process that has not yet been fully explained.

Most people probably carry within them the capacity to develop what one might call a"transcendent sense."The philosopher and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) found in religiosity above all the human"sense and taste for the infinite."

In our time, however, people are increasingly reluctant to speak ofreligiosity— because the term is all too readily associated with the traditional major churches. Today, people prefer to speak of"spirituality."

DIY Religiosity and Patchwork Spirituality— The currently fashionable termspiritualityis derived from the Latinspiritus(breath, spirit) orspiro(I breathe). Like religiosity, spirituality rests on the assumption that there is more than what we can perceive with our senses and explain with our reason — what is known astranscendence. Religions tend to present themselves as crease-resistant, unquestionable systems of meaning. Through their dogmas, they generally maintain static worldviews, which they only occasionally adjust to the spirit of the times. They are also adept at exploiting the idealism of their faithful and satisfying the need for magical explanations of the world. Religion is indeed more than mere magic — but unreflective faith can produce magical modes of perception.

Because many people have been disappointed by established religions, they frequently turn to the free market of worldviews and open spirituality. And those who cannot or will not adopt a ready-made belief system — such as those offered by religions — must piece together their own:"DIY religiosity"or"patchwork spirituality,"as it is now called. This non-committal approach is typical of the esoteric scene: a little Buddhism here, a pinch of Christianity, some shamanism, and a great deal of diffuse esotericism — from Bach flower remedies and astrology to crystal therapy and Native American sweat lodges, trance dancing and kinesiology.

This also reveals the difference between the claims of religion and those of free-floating spirituality:Religiosity demands— specific attitudes and behaviours;Spirituality permits— almost anything.

"The blind man makes a fine guide on a dark night. By day, one should trust one's own eyes."

The Uses of Religion— There is no question: for genuinely devout people, religious ideas such as belief in God or a superhuman energy, and spiritual practices such as prayer, worship and meditation, can be genuinely helpful and supportive. For non-believers, these are illusions. If well-disposed, non-believers may at least accept that such ideas are helpful to those who hold them. If not, they may regard them as — in the worst case, dangerous — fantasies of"religidiots."

On the other hand, it is precisely the"paternalistic care"prevalent in many religious organisations that drives many members into inner or outward distance from their religious community of origin. Especially at a time when the Catholic Church, for example, is engaged in heated debate about the Vatican's resistance to reform, the"Synodal Path,""Maria 2.0,"or sexual abuse, many people first retreat into"inner emigration"before eventually leaving the Church entirely.

Pious Inhumanity— Established religious worldviews face a particular challenge in the fact that believers can be bound to their belief system primarily through fear — for example, fear of hell. Dogmatism, extremism, fanaticism and, in the worst case, terrorism and religious warfare can be the result. For most religions carry the danger of tipping, through their dogmatism, into fanaticism. This can give rise to what one might call"pious inhumanity."One need not think only of sexual abuse, but also of what was perpetrated over decades in Christian children's homes by nuns, lay brothers, priests and pious supervisory and teaching staff. One might say ironically:the holier the feast, the busier the devil.

"God is the only being who, in order to reign, does not even need to exist."— Charles Baudelaire

Humanistic and Authoritarian Religion: Salvation and Harm Through Faith— The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm drew an early and important distinction between authoritarian and humanistic religion. The central question is: where does religion support and help the development of the human person — and where does it harm, by disempowering people and obstructing their free self-realisation? What is religion used for, and how is power exercised through it?

The distinction between authoritarian and humanistic religion runs — according to Erich Fromm — through all religions. Every creed can display authoritarian or even totalitarian traits, or develop them over time.

This applies to the extreme forms of fanatical Islamism — as current Islamist terrorist attacks demonstrate. But Christianity too has its excesses — such as the armed conflict between Catholic and Protestant Christians in Northern Ireland, or in strict religious groupings such asOpus Dei.The distinction between authoritarian and humanistic religion is also found in milder forms of religious conflict. For the transitions between religious certainty, dogmatism, proselytising, fanaticism and terrorism are fluid.

Authoritarian Religion: Between Glad Tidings and Threats

According to Erich Fromm, authoritarian religion is characterised by the conviction that a higher power (God) has a claim to reverence, worship and obedience. Central to it is the submission of the human being to the — purported — power of God. This power can be transferred to a human leader, quasi as God's representative on earth — that is, to the heads of religious communities or "true" interpreters of the holy scriptures (Bible, Qur'an, Talmud, etc.): priests, gurus, mullahs, bishops and the Pope thereby acquire an unquestionable authority. It is not permitted to call this into doubt or to distance oneself from the belief system.

The following criteria characterise authoritarian religions:

• Dualistic image of God and the world (good/evil, black/white)

• The deity is omniscient and omnipotent

• The human being is fundamentally powerless and insignificant

• Strength is obtained only through submission to unquestionable doctrines and the dogmatic prescriptions of the faith community

• Only willing submission to the power of God leads to divine grace and assistance

• The primary virtue is obedience

• The primary sin is disobedience

• The prevailing emotional state: fear, guilt, suffering, anxiety

• Loss of independence and integrity as an individual

• The human being surrenders responsibility for their life to God — or to His earthly representatives

Psychological gain: an awe-inspiring power protects me; I am part of it, part of the good, and I have my role in God's work.

Humanistic Religion

According to Erich Fromm, humanistic religion is characterised by the experience of oneness with the whole. In humanistic religion, the human being seeks self-realisation — not submission. Fromm writes:"Faith is the certainty of conviction, acquired through one's own experience by means of thought and feeling — not the acceptance of a doctrine on the authority of those who have formulated it."For him, the prevailing emotional state in humanistic religion is joy.

Humanistic religion does not prescribe how we should live. The human being is free — without religious prescriptions — to discover who they are, what has been placed within them, and what seeks to realise itself within them. With this freedom comes the responsibility for one's own life.

Humanistic religion is characterised by the following:

• The focus is on the human being, who affirms their own strengths and capacities

• They develop reason in order to understand themselves and their fellow human beings

• Self-realisation, not obedience, is the virtue

• Self-knowledge and self-experience aim at understanding one's own possibilities and limitations

• Each person takes responsibility for their own actions

• Developing love for others, for oneself and for the "universe"

• Good faith is the secure conviction arrived at through tested experience in thought and feeling — not through the adoption of doctrines or faith in authorities

• Independence and free decision are permitted — as is the possibility of error

• An integrated image of God and the world predominates

For the humanistically religious, the words of Immanuel Kant apply:"Have the courage to use your own understanding."

Religions thus become problematic and dangerous when they grow dogmatic and rigid, lose their grip on reality, and attempt to distort reality on the Procrustean bed of their belief system. It can therefore sometimes be helpful to examine more closely — and to clear away — the accumulated burden of religious dogmas that have gathered over the course of religious history. Good religion is not the worship of the ashes, but the carrying forward of the flame. As the Islamic saying goes:"Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel."

Religion That Heals — and Religion That Harms

Since religion touches on the fundamental questions of human existence, a religious worldview exerts influence not only on the individual's construction of reality —Who am I? What am I doing here? What constitutes a meaningful life for me?— but also on wellbeing. For there is no doubt that religion and faith can influence a person's health and psychological state — for better or for worse. This depends both on the content of the belief and on the intensity with which it is held.

When God is experienced as a benevolent, supportive and loving force, the effects are positive; particularly in the face of adversity and times of crisis,"trust in God"helps many people. More than a few alcoholics have been freed from their addiction and become sober through belief in what Alcoholics Anonymous calls a"higher power."When, however, a punishing, judging image of God predominates, the outcomes are frequently negative.

It can therefore be said that the current subjective attitude toward — and processing of — the religion learned and practised throughout one's life is of central importance in any given situation.

It would thus be wrong to say: Catholicism is good and Protestantism bad, or Islam is good and Buddhism bad. What matters is what one makes of one's faith on the subjective"inner stage."

This depends both on the content of one's faith and on the intensity with which it is held — and not least on the role religion plays in one's life overall, and how far it has shaped the construction of one's personality.

A meta-study summarising approximately 850 research findings on the question"Does religion make people healthy or ill?"(Koenig et al., 2001, cited by Marion Schowalter, Würzburg) arrived at the following conclusions:

Religion promotes health when:

• Religion is regarded as a genuine resource

• Seriously devout people suffer less from depression, anxiety and addiction

• They have a lower risk of illness and recover better after illness

• Religion sustains the faithful in times of need, provides hope and orientation

• It conveys the feeling of being held in difficult life situations

• Seriously devout people generally live by the motto:"You are not alone"

• They have higher levels of wellbeing, greater self-healing capacity and better stress management

• They have a higher life satisfaction

• They are more empathetic, engaged and compassionate

• They have less fear of death

Important: only religious patients benefit from religious interventions. Equally important: one cannot pretend to oneself that one is genuinely devout if one is not. Only then, however, is religion helpful.

Religion makes people ill when:

• It creates dependency, distorts the self and produces fear

• It often produces a lack of joy in living —"duty is more important than pleasure"

• Religious people often direct their anger against themselves

• Religion produces illusions rather than hope — miracles are not everyday occurrences and cannot be manufactured through religious rituals (prayers, vows, services)

• A high ego-ideal emerges: a"terror of the religious ego-ideal"—"follow Jesus"

• In tight religious communities, high social pressure and exclusion can arise: fear of punishment

• Cognitive rigidity: inflexibility and resistance to change

• Strict moral guidelines lead to ecclesiogenic neuroses

• Belief in God's omnipotence produces passivity

• The doctrine of divine action functions as a permanent threat

• Negative emotions arise: fear, depression, addiction

• Idealisation of alternative values:"anything is better than the Church"

The risk of psychological illness is particularly high when a punishing, controlling image of God is present: the God of vengeance, the judging God, the bookkeeping God, the God of achievement, and so on — when the threat or fear of misfortune predominates over the message of salvation; when a loss of realistic assessments, limits and proportions threatens; and when religion leads to isolation and loneliness, leaving the individual unfiltered to their own internal processes with no external corrective.

Conditions that may then arise include: obsessive-compulsive disorders, depression, anxiety, physical illness, personality disorders, addiction, psychosis, delusion, and others.

In Summary: What Is Religion?

At a sociological level, religion is a culturally transmitted system of norms that prescribes, within a given society, what is right and what is wrong. In this sense, religions — viewed in simplified terms — can be described as models of thought according to which people orient their lives, more or less consciously. Not only the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), but also the polytheistic ones (Hinduism, Shinto, Santería) and those that function without a personal image of God (Buddhism, Taoism) all demand virtuous behaviour and warn against sin: the true believers will be rewarded by entering paradise, or punished by eternal damnation in hell.

It is precisely here that the Janus-faced nature of all religions — regardless of tradition — becomes apparent: on the one side, the bright, life-affirming or piously humble face of religion, guided by the north star of genuine faith, promising a life in paradise to the true believer; on the other, the sometimes fanatical and self-righteous shadow, rooted in the conviction that one's own religious worldview is the only possible truth.

"The success of the dear Lord is connected to the fact that no one can see him."

Knowledge and Faith— The transitions between knowledge, belief, piety and credulity are fluid."Do you still believe, or do you already know?"is a slogan of the religion-critical Giordano Bruno Foundation (GBS). Undoubtedly, much is believed and little is known."Think for yourself — don't just pray along"is accordingly the tenor of the GBS. But what can we really know? A worthy goal might therefore be: to believe with a clear head.

Belief does reduce complexity — but one can reflect upon it, examine one's own position, and justify it to oneself. Religious simplicity can very well be combined with scientific diversity. And yet many people still prefer to believe what is easily comprehensible, tangible, and fits more neatly into their existing framework — rather than engaging with an unfathomable truth. As it is said in Zen Buddhism:

"The small truth has many words. The great truth has only silence."

Sources and Notes:

(1) In my book "Don’t Believe, What You Think - Sense and Nonsense of Religion and Religiosity" recently published by Springer-Verlag, I engage in depth with this Janus-faced nature — not only of religions as a whole, but also of the two sides of individual faith and personal religiosity.

References:

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• Utsch, M., Bonelli, R. M., Pfeifer, S.:Psychotherapie und Spiritualität(Berlin/Heidelberg 2014). Springer.

• Grom, Bernhard:Religionspsychologie(München 1992). Kösel.

• Wiesenhütter, Eckart:Religion und Tiefenpsychologie(Gütersloh 1977). Gütersloher Verlagshaus.

• VELKD/Reller, Horst (Ed.):Handbuch religiöse Gemeinschaften, 4th ed. (Gütersloh 1993). Gütersloher Verlagshaus.

• Schnepper, Arndt:Zankäpfel der Kirche(Wuppertal 2007). R. Brockhaus.

• Trubach, Horst (Ed.):Was glauben die anderen?(Gütersloh 1993). Gütersloher Verlagshaus.

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• Buggle, Franz:Denn sie wissen nicht, was sie glauben(Aschaffenburg 2004).