Why Is Personal Meaning So Important For Individuals? How Can Religion Help One Find A Sense Of Meaning

As time has progressed, religious scrutiny has expanded. Systems of faith are often written off as fruitless, but religion holds strong purposes. Cultures have religion to explain surroundings, unite individuals, and provide hope.

For purpose of this essay, religion will be defined as a collection of institutional beliefs and customs concerning humanity and the purpose of the universe [1]. Key beliefs within religion that will be explored, as well as there relation to reason, are:

What purpose does religion serve? Why does religion continue to play an important role in human life? Koenig (2009) declared that atheism is rare, and rather, 90% of the world’s population practices religion or spirituality. Religion and spirituality have ambiguous meanings and are not universally defined. Although difficult to adequately define, Koenig (2009) inferred that “religion is rooted in an established tradition that arises out of a group of people with common beliefs and practices concerning the sacred” (p. 284). Spirituality, however, is often defined on an individual basis and not necessarily connected to religious beliefs (Koenig, 2009). Researchers often relate spirituality to personal interaction with spiritual entities

-From that perspective, religion is most accurately seen as a rope or cable of meaning that stretches through human history and has anchored, in one form or another, every culture or subculture of human society from its beginning

Religion has been a powerful force in human history because mankind has longed and searched for the answers to its purpose, the reason for being and the possibility of life after physical death. They reasoned that an afterlife would be a place of accounting and reckoning for the life they lived on earth. Religious belief systems seemed to give the answers as to how to prepare for the afterlife. Religion became the means of giving answers to those basic yet deep seated questions of both life and death. Religion provided a format of rules and laws for conduct and treatment toward others based on the desires and wishes of a god or gods

I used to think it was just systems of different beliefs that guide people’s way of living. While this is true, it is more evident that religion is so much more than that. Religion has many varying objectives and reasonings, but common reasons for religious beliefs is that it is used as a guided path for guidance and comfort. The guided path has a purpose to it as well. Such as it gives people a sense of security, stability, and especially source for hope for the followers.

“religion sees its primary task as cultivating and nourishing the human soul or spirit,” and that, “each person, according to this view, has inner life that he or she may choose to develop; this inwardness goes deeper than the usual object of psychological investigation and cannot fairly be explained in Freudian or other psychological terms.”

Throughout history people wonder about the meaning of life. Religion has been created and intertwined with culture to all areas of the world. How to determined what should we do and what happens after we die? Without religion, we cannot answer to these confusing questions. Most of the religions starting point is good, both Harriet Jacobs and William Black are given an idea of obedient to god and doing good thing will have good return in the future. Unfortunately, religion become a weapon for some people to oppressed the others. We realized religion have positive aspects, negative aspects and still play very important role in the today’s

Depending on the devotion level and sense of involvement in religion, a person may have a deeper feeling of having a purpose in their life. (Negru-Subtirica, Tiganasu, Dezutter, and Luyckx, 2016). Based on age groups, religion is a coping method for some when facing terminal disease or old age (Gil-Juliá & Ballester-Arnal, 2013). When facing these life issues, having a meaning in life is important for mental health (Jung, 2015). It can be difficult for relatives and the person themselves when left without a coping method.

Religion is a sincerely challenging word to define because there is a vast amount of religions that are categorized and there hasn’t been an exact standard definition. In, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life by Emile Durkheim, the author explains how beliefs, rites, and religions are components of the human experience. By comparing primitive and modern religions, Durkheim concludes that every religion needs a Church, which is a place where all of the people who practice specific religions gather. Furthermore, Religions are constructed by human societies because it provides a meaningful explanation of why the earth is in existence. Although rites and beliefs are different for every religion, they are significantly essential in defining religion, and without them, religions would not exist.

Curiosity, acceptance, family, honor, idealism, independence, order, physical activity, power, romance, saving, social contract, eating, status, tranquility, vengeance. These are sixteen basic human desires, that Professor Steven Reiss claims are present in every human (Reiss). For some people to achieve these desires, they turn to fellow groups of people who share the same morals and values. Religion is an outlet for these people to come together and support one another in their belief systems. Religion comes with the concept of deity, a higher power, who some believe to be a God. God comes in many shapes and sizes in many different religions. In defining religion, it is necessary to explore the basic beliefs and interpretations of God in the numerous religions and sects of the world. The different denominations of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism will be the main aspects of this paper in order to define religion.

Along with strengthening the individual, religion represents how society sees the facts of experience.3 Religion is a way to comprehend the natural world’s greatness, and the awe towards nature became a basis for religion. Similar to how icons or paintings are made so that the followers can understand god and religious concepts better, society created religion to understand the world better. Thus each god, spirits or concepts of religion represents one side of this huge force that controls the world. In addition, religion allows the followers to sense the eternity and beauty of life. Similar to understanding the concepts of death and

I think the purpose of religions is to give people a standard to strive for. I believe that most religions express to their followers the importance of being a good or kind person. The ultimate goal to me it seems is to get as close to this ideal as possible. As for the functions of religions, I think a main one is that it provides a level of comfort for people. When times get rough, a person's faith is something they can fall back on. They find comfort in believing that whatever higher power they worship will take care of them during their hardships. Furthermore, when a person’s life takes an unexpected turn, they rationalize it as being part of “God’s plan” for them, which I think makes it easier for them to cope with and accept their situation.

This strong faith in God induces people to lead a moral life. They abide by certain rules that are established to help them lead a peaceful life with their fellow beings. Most of the religions are believed to have started as a way to help people to live a peaceful and harmonious life.

The vast majority of human religions fulfill the basic need to believe in something greater than oneself. Religion provides many opportunities for positive social bondings and promotes a strong positive moral feeling