From the earliest times, the most primal human need has been belief in the supernatural. Temples and priests were at the forefront of ancient societies. People needed faith in gods to fill the vacuum in their souls. It has quelled their fears, in frequent cases of death, and relieved their suffering during painful experiences. Faith gave meaning to their lives, through it they explained what happened to them.
Religion popularity has decreased nowadays, and the need for faith has been undermined. While in the past, the most important place in a village was the church, today it is mostly visited on holidays for ritual processions. Why has it already lost its meaning? There are several main reasons for this. One of them is the word that is preached there. It is not updated. It is not supplemented by the new discoveries and theories of psychology or other spiritual teachings. This causes people to look for other sources of information that better meet their spiritual needs and problems. Mental suffering has not decreased, on the contrary, it is constantly increasing among many. But while in the past people looked for salvation from them in the church, today they look more for it in psychology. It gives them much more understanding and support for their problems because it draws information from multiple sources rather than just a single book. Even if it is the book of the books, when the focus is on it alone, it sets the stage for prejudice and dogmatism that creates a barrier to human problems. One cannot look at heterogeneous human problems through the prism of limited knowledge. This is a problem, not only with Christianity, but with all other religions.
In the past, people were ignorant, knowledge was lower and this stimulated belief. When there are no explanations for what happens in life, a person has a stronger need for faith, which serves as a shield against fears. This has often turned into a credulity that has given rise to many superstitions. Today, people focus on knowledge, which is constantly increasing, and this reduces their need for faith.
The purpose of religion was to connect man with the divine, but this cannot be done with only limited or crooked knowledge. The mental problems and needs of people have become bigger and more complex, and therefore religion as a doctrine can no longer cover them. If this doctrine is not expanded and built upon, it will increasingly lose importance. Not that the importance of this doctrine has diminished, but people now have more questions that it cannot answer.
The other major reason for the rejection of religion is the excessive focus on the material in today’s culture. The more importance we attach to material goods, the more our spiritual needs remain unsatisfied. People of today try to fill their spiritual deficits with material goods, but this is like trying to feed on air. This creates a dissatisfaction within us that makes us crave more and more consumption of pleasures. In this situation, even when a person turns to faith and spiritual teachings, he still cannot experience soul fulfillment because his thoughts and feelings are not yet sufficiently attuned to this frequency.
With the advancing pace of satisfaction with material goods, many are already beginning to look for other meaning and other goals in their lives. But when the focus has been too much and too long on the material, its shift in another direction becomes slow and painful. It is accompanied by states of confusion, shocks, conflicts, apathy. This is accompanied by a loss of value of old values and views and a search for new ones. The stronger the feeling of dissatisfaction with the current situation, the stronger the need to look for something better. And when all the material possibilities for this are exhausted, or when they are simply unavailable, only the path to spirituality remains before us.
