In the modern era it seems that many who want to promote atheism feel they have discovered a damning critique of religious faith. We’re told that it is quite clear that religion isn’t what it pretends to be but rather is an underhanded and devious tool used to manipulate credulous people. Religion isn’t really about God or the gods—they don’t exist. It’s simply about people doing things (normally nefarious things) to other people.
What’s rather strange about this point is that not only is it not a novel recognition to see religion as a tool used by humans for human ends, but that it is itself a line of thought thoroughly explored in the Bible. The Scriptures are fully aware (or perhaps it might be better to say that God shows that he is fully aware in Scripture) that religion, like almost every other aspect of human life, is one in which humans have found a way of using language about God or the gods to do what they wish and get what they want. Just in the New Testament we might think of Jesus’ consistent critique of the Judaism of his day and locale as marked, especially in its most overtly religiously observant, by doing religion in a way that is aimed, not at God, but at people and of getting things from them. Jesus is explicit about it when he speaks to his disciples of those who “love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.” (Matt 6:5) They pray, says Jesus, not in relation to God, but simply with an eye to others—impressing them, currying favour, gaining reputation. Such use of religion is not just evident in Jesus’ critique but continued into the world of early Christians. Paul speaks in his letters of those who have adopted the Christian faith, and frequently sought out Christian leadership, for the sake of money, sex and power, and are skilful in using religion as a means to these ends. They “creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions” (2 Tim 3:6). Perhaps the most stunning example of the use of religion for other ends is the interaction in Acts 12 between Herod and those from Tyre and Sidon, who because they’re concerned about Herod’s displeasure with them, come to meet him and acclaim his as a god. No doubt the Sidonians had no interest in the theological truthfulness of their acclamation, just that they were managing to butter up a rather full- of- himself leader and establish their local security and wellbeing.
In these ways the Bible makes clear that it understands that humans in their fallenness use religion, just as they use every aspect of human life at their disposal, to control others and get what they want. We rely on the way that people hunger for social approval, the way they hunger for food, the way they hunger for intimacy, the way they hunger for security and significance, to do things to others by offering the promise of what will meet their hunger. And humans do this with religion too, offering divine approval and disapproval, divine access or sanction, to keep people in line, bend them to our wills and get what we want. But for atheism this raises an awkward question: we manipulate others with promised food, favor and fame because such things exist and terminate on innate human desires for them, whether physical, social or psychological. But what does this say about our ability to manipulate others with religion? If religion is the opiate of the masses, why is there a religious equivalent of an opiate receptor in humans that is so open, as a binding site, to claims about God and the gods? We hunger for food, for love, for approval, because all such things exist and we as humans live in relation to them as external givens. Perhaps then the truth of religious distortion and its capitalization on the religious nature of humans, rather than supporting atheism, raises for materialism the question so well put by C. S. Lewis that “If [we] find in [ourselves] desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world,” a world of knowing the living and true God.