Out of this world benefits at a discount in long-life world

Recently publish research from St Andrew's University seems to indicate that participation in organised religion in our society for significant numbers of people, rests on their assessment of the perceived cost/benefit ratio. And what used to be a deal-maker has fallen in the ranks of highly motivating factors: the afterlife question appears to be much less significant in religious participation than may once have been the case. Though this may become more important as people get older. The solution suggested by the researchers is to emphasise more the present-worldly benefits of participation such as friendship networks, better life-expectancy and other things that other research has shown up as the side-benefits of religious participation.

religious organisations need to do more to highlight the social and spiritual benefits of participation in religion in present day life if they are to increase congregation sizes and attract people of all ages, particularly young people.

At first I was a little unsure how I responded to this: the idea that we might 'sell' religion by reference to the fringe benefits. But then I thought that this is nothing new: it seems to me that the offer of finding forgiveness, salvation, satisfaction, fulfilment, joy, peace, heaven and probably a dozen other things have long been part of the 'offer' being made. So is it a problem that the offer being commended is more "material" or this worldly"? Well, perhaps: this comes to feeling a bit more like proselytism: the offer of extrinsic benefits (that is extrinsic to the nature of the main thing). However, I don't think that is quite what would necessarily be going on. These benefits are to a greater or lesser degree intrinsic to the offer being made: they are all part of or direct effects of 'salvation' (scare-quoted to alert us to the presence of a metaphor which may not be a 'master' metaphor). In fact, it might be argued that they are the way that salvation and the need for salvation show up in various lives. I think that companionship, etc are similar though they are not the exclusive property of an offer of salvation in Christian terms.

However, where I do think that there is a problem may be in the practicalities relating to the matter of obliquity. In this case it would mean that if one joined a church in order to find companionship that may not happen because companionship is something that comes 'obliquely' to us, as the result of other things being pursued.

The problem I could foresee is that (as I have seen in a few cases before) a person can be so caught up in trying to find friendship that the way they comport themselves actually gets in the way of it; their desperation becomes inimical (excuse the pun)to finding companionship; it puts people off. The apparent neediness is something that spooks others and makes them wary; they worry that they will not be in a friendship but in a vampiric relationship where their good-will may be sucked dry; a far cry from the mutuality of real companionship and friendship but rather an exploitation masquerading as friendship. In seeking to 'save their life' they lose it. Ironically then, the people most prone to this are the ones who most need to lose their fixation and focus instead of the main thing, relating to God, in order to be free enough to avail themselves of the fringe benefits, lest grasping at companionship (or longer life or whatever elso) fails and worse cuts them off from the true source of freedom to accept the very thing they seek.