(Guest blogger: Paul Vander Klay.  Paul is currently a pastor in Sacramento, California.  Before that, he was a missionary in the Dominican Republic with Christian Reformed World Missions.  He has his own blog LeadingChurch.com)

The Vancouver Sun recently published a piece lauding the therapeutic effects of religion in general.  Studies that support this and media reports on this subject are regular and frequent.

In communities where a sort of Christian civil religion dominates and sees its main competition as secularism I suspect these pieces are generally well received. I think though that increasing religious pluralism might be changing this response. There are many who attach “coexist” bumper stickers to their cars and assert that religions are “all the same” and the world would be better if the major world religious could be stripped of their contradictory material in order to achieve a universal religious harmony. In such a context Christians may view reports such as these as threats, validation not of their own beliefs but instead of the position that generic religion is preferable to exclusive religion because it is both beneficial and less prone to religious conflict.

I think a Christian doesn’t have to evacuate exclusive claims in order to affirm the benefits of more generic religion. If Christianity is the most true religion it doesn’t mean that other religions don’t also get some things right. It also stands to reason that if the creator God according to Christianity made us for himself, that the psychological, emotional and metaphysical wiring necessary for that relationship to take place would be beneficial generally for all, not just specifically for Christianity.

I was reflecting on the issue of control a couple of days ago in this light. We all know two contradictory things about people and control. On one hand we are fragile, temporary, vulnerable, dependent creatures circling a small planet in a very immense and dangerous universe so that we have very little control over not only our own self-preservation but also our wants and desires. We also know that a feeling of control both gives us a sense of safety and pleasure, and also a desire and grasping for control leads to much human suffering. We need to feel safe but the truth is that we are not and safety is ultimately not something within our capacity to perfectly secure. Even the relationship between safety and control is fraught with hazard.

Most religions seek to balance this equation. Religions, by connecting us to a being outside of our system seek to balance the equation. In simple terms: “we are weak, but he is strong”. The therapeutic benefits of this are obvious. If we had to fully face our incredible vulnerability we may well be completely paralyzed from any productive activity OR prone to the kind of control seeking behaviors that ruin relationships and create conflicts human community. Religions help us live with definite uncertainty AND feel OK about it enough to live productively.

Here, however, we do see the value of religion in general, but we also might begin to understand the value of religious contradictory details that resist the “lowest common denominator” approach to religion. Religion achieves this therapeutic value with story. Just as we have mentally grown into our awareness of both vulnerability and security through our personal stories, so also meta-stories that religions tell offers this value for communities. Even though stories can have common themes, good stories are never generic. Stories have power in their specificity.

The reason “generic” religion has never simply conquered the religious marketplace (the idea has been around long enough to do so) is because generic religion is always too weak. It’s story can grip tightly enough to actually accomplish what we see religions do in fact accomplish in general. Religion in general may be therapeutic, but generic religion will likely continue to under-perform.