Why Are Religious People Healthier and Happier? | Rabbi Darren Levine | Big Think

Why Are Religious People Healthier and Happier?

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Science and religion have a complicated history. Scientists cannot quantify God—God is pretty difficult to bring into the laboratory, quips Rabbi Darren Levine—but what they can study and measure is the effect of faith on people's well-being and life satisfaction. When religious wisdom is

taught and enacted well, it focuses on ideals like deepening relationships with family and friends, personal responsibility, and making a positive impact in the world. Levine is a proponent of positive Judaism, which merges key characteristics of positive psychology with practices of reformed Judaism. The field of psychology is often mired in humanity's flaws, but positive psychology is a movement that aims to study people's strengths rather than their weaknesses. The same shift can be true for religion, and nurtured by the power of community. Rabbi Levine sums it up in five letters: PERMA, which stand for positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. Together, those five pillars can foster greater happiness and health.

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DARREN LEVINE:

Darren Levine is the founding rabbi of Tamid and first set the vision for the synagogue in 2011. He cares deeply about building community, moral education, and creative Jewish expression. He holds Rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and has a Doctorate in Pastoral Psychology from the Post Graduate Center for Mental Health.

Levine's His academic and pastoral interests rest at the intersection of psychology and religion and moral education. He has served the Jewish Community Project in Lower Manhattan and Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York City. He’s done international relief work in Israel and Africa, served a High Holiday pulpit in South Africa, worked for over 10 years as Jewish Camps for the Reform Movement and served as a Chaplain in the US Army.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Darren Levine: Ideas of the science of religion are complicated. God is difficult to bring into the laboratory, and it is very hard to quantify the sacred, but science is beginning to ask questions about the results or the consequences of participating in religious life. Questions like: does participating in a religious community, does having faith in God, does engaging in a process of building a relationship with the divine, do those questions add positivity to people’s lives?

And the research is conclusive, and the research shows that yes, a person who participates in a faith community, who has a relationship with God, and who is on a quest for purpose, that their lives are better and that they do scale higher in the tests of well-being and happiness.

Does that mean it is because as they engage in a process of discovering their faith and deepening their relationship with the God that it is reciprocated on high? I don’t know; that it is very hard to quantify. But what we do know is that people who participate actively in faith community, they have a higher standard of health and that might be because within religious communities, in the best-case scenario, the teachings and the wisdom and the practices are about things like family, personal responsibility, making a positive impact in the world, helping others, deepening relationships; and all of those practices do add a positive value to a person’s life. And so the reactions or the consequences for participating in a faith community do add positive value and well-being and life satisfaction to people’s lives.

Positive psychology got its start from the awareness that the field was focused too much on people’s weaknesses and not their strengths, and so Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson worked to shift the way psychology is practiced, rather than think of someone and their problems we think of someone and their strengths, and we try to develop of those strengths, try to see the best in people. Everybody has signature strengths, and we want to focus and help them develop those and in developing those it helps to shore-up some of their weaknesses.

In a communal setting, expanding on the inventory, we try to apply the same characteristics that are articulated for individuals but we try to put them into practice in a communal setting. And in a community setting is where Judaism lends itself beautifully to applying the inventory of strengths and characteristics.

So the intersection of where positive psycholo...

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