Living the Secular Life_New Answers to Old Questions

by Phil Zuckerman

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  IN SEEKING TO gain a better understanding of how secular people cope with difficult life circumstances, I’ve spoken with various professionals whose work involves helping and studying nonreligious people who must deal with physical or emotional challenges.

  One such professional is Hilary Wells, the founder of Secular Therapists of Chicago, an association of counseling psychologists who officially offer “nonreligious counseling and therapy.” Hilary is in her late fifties, and she’s been a practicing therapist for over twenty-five years. She explained the birth of her practice: “When I looked up secular therapists or secular therapy on the Internet, I couldn’t find anything. All I could find were plenty of religious sites, and plenty of spiritual options. You can find Christian therapists that offer ‘Bible-based’ help, and Jewish therapy groups, or counseling specifically geared toward Catholics, and so on. But nothing came up for specifically secular people. So it seemed like a good idea for people to be able to find secular therapy if that was what they were specifically looking for.” But what does secular therapy mean, actually? “It means that the therapist is coming from a position of not holding or teaching supernatural beliefs, and I generally I work with nonreligious clients.”

  For Hilary, religious beliefs are, at root, illusions. And while some illusions can sometimes be psychologically comforting, they are not the best building blocks for long-term emotional stability. “For people who are trapped in an unbearable situation that they can do nothing about, illusions such as that God is looking out for you and good will triumph in the end—these might offer some relief from the emotional and physical stress. But on the other hand, it is likely to hinder or even stop people from realistically figuring out what needs to be done in their life.”

  So what do secular people do when life gets hard and they are having difficulty coping? “It all boils down to our connections with other people. We are social animals. We derive comfort, meaning, and love from those around us, the people we are connected to in our social environment. That’s where secular people look when life is hard, or when they are suffering. And when those social connections aren’t there, then yes, secular people must look to themselves and become more self-reliant—which is actually easier to do when you have a secular outlook. When it comes to self-assurance and self-reliance, the nonreligious are definitely on more solid ground than the religious, who are much more dependent on their God or gods.”

  Another expert who can shed some light on secular coping is Karen Hwang, a professor of counseling psychology who has worked for several years with people who have suffered a spinal cord injury (SPI). As an employee in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and the New Jersey Medical School, Professor Hwang has looked at various aspects of the SPI experience, such as how women with SPI handle motherhood and marriage, how SPI affects sexual functioning, how certain drug therapies can help reduce spinal cord inflammation, and more. And she has also looked specifically at atheists with SPI—people like Amber, discussed earlier.

  In her pioneering research, Professor Hwang has found that when comparing nonbelievers who have experienced SPI with believers, there are no significant differences in self-ratings of overall happiness, and that most atheists actually report that their nonbelief helped them cope with their injury.

  “You might think that because secular people don’t have religious beliefs to fall back on, that they might be kind of lost when such an injury occurs. But I actually found the opposite. Some of my interview subjects brought up the fact that because they never had the religious beliefs to begin with, that means they never went through any ‘crisis of faith’ or anything like that. So it was very easy for them to accept that these things happen. And it’s not that God doesn’t love you or you are being punished—there isn’t a ‘why did this happen to me?’ crisis. There isn’t that spiritual or existential disappointment. It is very easy for them to say, ‘Well, it was an accident. What do I need to do now?’”

  Rather than questioning the “meaning” or “purpose” of their disability, those secular individuals studied by Professor Hwang were markedly comfortable with the arbitrary nature of their injury. “A nontheistic outlook on life provided a logical and coherent basis for integrating disability within a larger life context.” Other studies bolster Dr. Hwang’s assertions that being religious can sometimes have its downside when people are faced with trauma. For example, researchers Martie Thompson and Paula Vardaman found that in the aftermath of the murder of a loved one, people from religious families can experience increased levels of distress when pleading with God during their grieving process. And Kenneth Pargament found that some religious believers can feel psychological discontent during times of war, when their prayers to God seem to go unheeded. And as Judith Herman argues in her book Trauma and Recovery, traumatic events can often “violate the victim’s faith in a natural or divine order and cast the victim into a state of existential crisis.”

  While there is no question that for most people religious belief serves as a soothing balm in times of pain and suffering, what the counseling experience of Dr. Wells and the research of people like Dr. Hwang alerts us to is the fact that—at least sometimes, and for some people—religious beliefs can be counterproductive. And furthermore, in certain situations, secular men and women might actually be on better footing during trying times.

  Luke Galen is a professor of psychology at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, and he is one of only a handful of academics in America who specifically study the psychology of secular folk. He’s been at it for several years now, looking at atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, humanists, and various other such irreligious people, seeking to discover the ways in which they are psychologically distinct from—as well as similar to—religious people. In his research, he has studied local secular communities in Michigan, but he has drawn from national samples as well.

  In comparing and contrasting nonreligious people who are involved with secular organizations to demographically similar religious people who are members of churches, he has found that the two groups aren’t all that different emotionally or psychologically, with a few notable exceptions: those affiliated with secular organizations are more likely to be male and more highly educated (whereas churchgoers are more likely to be female and less educated), and when it comes to standard measures of personality, church members tend to score a bit higher in terms of agreeableness than their secular counterparts, but nonreligious people affiliated with secular groups tend to score a bit higher in terms of openness to new experiences, as well as being more intellectually oriented. And while both groups claim to be more or less equally satisfied with their lives, religiously affiliated people report having higher degrees of social support.

  When I asked Professor Galen about the many studies which report that religious people seem to enjoy better levels of mental health than secular people, he explained that while this may certainly be due to the social support factor, it may also be a result of conformity—the positive outcome of simply being in line with one’s broader social context.

  In other words, people who are doing what most people are doing tend to report better states of mental health than people who are not. As he explains, “A lot has to do with the definition of ‘normality’ within your given culture. For example, when we look worldwide, it is true that, overall, religious people have a slight edge in terms of life satisfaction or lower depression. But that may be because they are engaging in what is considered to be normal, common behavior in their societies: participating in religion.

  “But if we look at religiously active people in highly secular societies, where most people aren’t religious, then suddenly the effect disappears—religious people aren’t doing better psychologically, and may in some cases actually be doing worse than secular people. So, for example, when looking at the more secular countries of Europe, religious people there don’t ex
hibit better mental health. And even within the United States, in the more religious parts of the country, religious people tend to report better mental health—but not religious people in the least religious parts of the country. So it looks like at least part of good mental health is just being embedded in the normative community.”

  In truth, when it comes to the specifics of secular coping—the range, contours, and efficacies—we don’t know much. Secular coping has been an almost totally neglected area of research. However, we do know that people who are clearheaded problem solvers, people who can say, “Okay, here’s what I need to do to make things better, here’s step one, step two, and so on”—such people tend to do better in general when coping with problems in life. As Professor Galen explains, “Secular people don’t believe in a God they can rely on or in the magical power of prayer—there are no ‘spiritual’ or ‘mystical’ solutions. So they’ve got to look at a sad or hard or difficult situation and think to themselves, ‘Well, what do I need to do here?’ So secular people use those basic, rational problem-solving mechanisms more often than religious people, and they probably do so more successfully when coping with trauma.”

  In Luke’s own experience with loss, he didn’t turn to God for comfort. Although a believer as a child, he had become an atheist by his mid-twenties. And it was then, just as his atheism was overshadowing his theism, that his beloved father unexpectedly died the day after Christmas. “So that was really a test of my atheism, when my dad died. I mean, I was like, ‘If this is true that there isn’t a God, then I’ll never see my dad again. He’s not in heaven. There is no afterlife.’ I really had to seriously think about the implications of that. And I did—very deeply and very seriously. And I knew that I just couldn’t believe any of it. My dad was gone, and that was that. But it was actually not as traumatic as you might expect, because I found that I didn’t need to believe all that religious stuff from my childhood in order to feel better. I still had the memory of my father, and that was good enough. The things that I valued about my dad were still there, inside of me. He lives on in me, and in my brothers. Why did I need to think he was in heaven looking down at me? Why did I need to think I would someday meet him again? In all honesty, I think those things seem kind of weird to me now.”

  But how did he cope, exactly, when his dad died?

  “Friends and family. Friends and family. That’s it.”

  Comfort from the Religious

  Secular people endure trying times by turning to friends, family, and, if nothing more, themselves. Social connectedness, rational problem solving, and perhaps a slightly higher dose of self-reliance. But it must be acknowledged, as I conclude this chapter, that for some these may not be enough. In the wake of tragedy, being secular can have its disadvantages—especially when family and friends falter.

  I will never forget a conversation I had many years ago when I was working as a director of a summer day camp near Hollywood. There was a woman named Sarah, a mother of one of the campers, who would often linger at the camp long after the other parents had left. Sarah would hang out with me each morning and chitchat while we watched the kids play capture the flag or dodgeball. One day we happened to be talking about being secular, and she said to me, “You know, Joey is actually my second child. My first son died. He was hit by a car. He was eight. I’ve always been an atheist, but I really felt the emptiness of it then. After he died, all my friends—who are all nonreligious—they just didn’t know how to handle it. They didn’t know what to do or what to say. Same with most of my relatives. It was like people were just too freaked out, too scared. They avoided me. And I found myself incredibly alone and depressed.

  “And then a neighbor—who I hardly knew—she came over to my house one day and said that she was a Christian and that she was sorry for my loss and that she had been praying for me. And she invited me to her women’s group at church. I went. The women there were so kind, so loving. They were so open to me and so open to the pain I was going through. I ended up going to that women’s group for several months.

  “I never did accept Jesus as my personal savior, and I never turned to God. I just can’t believe all that stuff. But I’ll never forget how those religious women took me in. They were so warm and sympathetic—and they didn’t even know me. Let me tell you: there’s nothing like that out there when you’re secular.”

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  SARAH’S EXPERIENCE IS illustrative of the fact that not all aspects of secular culture are admirable or ideal. As she expresses, secular coping when times are tough is not—at least not for everyone—all about staunch self-reliance, pragmatic problem solving, or sustaining support from family and friends. There are times when being secular can be isolating and alienating. There are times when a lack of a committed community of religious faith can be a real vacuum.

  There are, in short, some aspects of secular life that don’t measure up well when compared to their religious counterparts. In any assessment of secular life, this must be acknowledged. And hopefully, such honest acknowledgment can spur us to creatively and compassionately think about what needs to be done within secular culture as we seek to live life—and face life’s troubles—without certain benefits that come with being religious.

  Chapter 7

  Don’t Fear the Reaper

  Everything dies. Everything. And that’s just how it works.”

  “What’s there to be afraid of? When I’m dead, I’ll be dead.”

  “This is it. This life is all there is. Death is actually what gives life its meaning.”

  “If there’s something more, then I’ll find out after I die. But for now I’m here, and this life is good and is to be enjoyed.”

  “You have to live life to its fullest. Cherish life. Suck the marrow out of it, you know? And try to be as good a person you can be and try to make a positive difference. Because there’s no other life. That’s the heart of being agnostic—to me. If you think you are going to go to heaven after you die, well, then, this life is just sort of a staging area, isn’t it? Then this life is just a precursor or transition to something better. I think that makes people apathetic—if that’s what they truly believe. Or it can make you not do things—or not feel or love as strongly as you could or should. But if there is no heaven or reincarnation—and that’s what I believe—then this is actually the whole thing. This is everything. This life is all we get, and that means we have to truly love it. And never, never, never take it for granted. Because it’s precious.”

  These quotes are a mere sampling of some of the more common shared sentiments that I’ve heard secular men and women express concerning the topic of mortality. Although every individual obviously has his or her own personal approach to, experiences of, and feelings about death, most secular men and women articulate certain basic themes: (1) this life—miraculous, rich, and fleeting—is the only life, (2) we must seize it, savor it, and be open to it, and (3) there is nothing to fear when it comes to the end.

  First Death

  “It was sort of like a whacking sound,” Michele explained. “But more like a smack than a whack.”

  “What was it?” I asked.

  We were in Michele’s room. I was lying on the unkempt floor and she was sitting on her unkempt bed. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon in the mid-1980s. Bauhaus was playing in the background. We were teenagers. Michele was recounting the adventures of her previous night with Flea, the frenetic bass player of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. She had been in love with him for quite some time; I am fairly certain that she was his first groupie. She had been going to Chili Peppers shows from the get-go, when they were just a raggedy, goofy, unknown punk-funk band from Fairfax High School. And then she started sleeping with Flea a few months after the release of their second album. We were all very impressed—but not too surprised. Michele was like that: she loved things, she got way into them, and she went for them with gusto.

  So Michele was recounting to me how, the night before, she and Flea had been lounging on this
big couch at some random house in Echo Park where there were a bunch of other people and some of those people were messing around in the kitchen and then somebody had dropped something and it had made a huge mess—and a bizarre sound.

  “It was sort of like this loud swap,” she continued.

  “More like a thwap?” I offered. “Like the sound of a steak thwapping against a Cyclops’s eye?”

  Michele paused.

  “Huh?”

  “You know,” I explained, “like in that story of Agamemnon or Prometheus—that guy who fights the giant Cyclops and then throws a steak in his eye?”

  Michele clutched a pillow against her belly and started laughing.

  “That was Odysseus,” she said. “And it wasn’t a steak—it was a stake!”

  For a moment I just didn’t understand her, and then it struck me, embarrassingly. I had always thought it had been a steak—a thick piece of raw red meat—that had been thrown onto the Cyclops’s eye, and as my mistake dawned on me, Michele just started laughing ever more hysterically and then she threw a pillow at me and I started laughing really hard and I kept trying to talk, to come up with some face-saving defense having to do with a reference to the steaks you always see in Tom and Jerry cartoons, but we both just laughed so hard that it hurt in the gut, and then we laughed some more and somehow started riffing on whether or not it would be a “rib-eye” steak or a “rib-aye” steak—was Odysseus a Scottish sailor?—and we laughed some more and then as we stopped to catch our breath we suddenly started up again and this went on for quite some time and I never did find out what the noise from the kitchen was.

  Michele and I had been friends since the third grade. In elementary school, we shared a love for water fights, which we often organized in the neighborhood on hot summer days. We also shared a love for music; she gave me the LP of Revolver at my eleventh birthday party—a surprise birthday party that she helped organize, and which inevitably devolved into a water fight. We also shared a love for the theater—in junior high, she was the star of Auntie Mame and I played her ward, Patrick Dennis. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream we were both in the troupe of mechanicals—she played Tom Snout and I played Peter Quince. In high school, we comforted each other when too drunk or too stoned, we hiked in the local mountains when we felt too restless, and we went to see the movie Brazil six times, often donning high-heeled shoes tied upside down on top of our heads in homage to one of the characters in the film. And of course, we went to a lot of Red Hot Chili Peppers shows.