This morning I received a PM asking about my experiences of the effect of religious belief on a person’s ability to cope during a crisis, I am going to add my answer here, because it is relevant, and because in this form it should not contravene the group’s rules.

The effect of religion in survival situations

I have seen religious beliefs work both for and against someone’s determination to survive.

On the one hand I have been in a very bad situation with someone who had an exceptional tolerance for their suffering because they believed that, if they kept faith, God would provide and care for them and see them through in the end. His conviction did not just support him but enabled him to help the morale of all of us at a time when there really was very little to be cheerful about, and to do that became a cause for him, something he believed he was there to do, which only reinforced his own determination to survive.

As an aside, having a reason to survive, whatever it might be, is a huge psychological boost to the determination to do so for most people.

But I have also seen cases where because of a deep belief that whatever happened was God’s will and that if they died they would, anyway, only be going to a better place, people have refused to help themselves or struggle for survival, even though had they done so the chance of survival was there. They effectively gave up and not only resigned themselves to ‘their fate’, but embraced and welcomed it.

In one case, this belief encompassed a group of nearly 40 people, some of whom had babies and young children with them. Nothing we could do or say would change their minds and all but one young woman, who eventually followed us with her sister’s baby, sat where they were and died when the enemy attack we knew was coming and could not prevent came down. To be sure they had already suffered hugely, and perhaps they had simply had enough, but we could have taken them to safety, at least for a while. It might not have made any difference in the end considering the situation in that place, but the one who came with us, and the baby, were still alive when we left months later.

I’m trying to remain impartial here, but I have never been able to forget, nor to understand, that incident or attitude.

So religion can work both ways, depending on the form it takes and, I guess, the nature of the person’s belief. I neither promote nor denigrate it, as an aid to or factor in survival.