War on Christianity by image.

      When Hollywood undertook to remake the 1962 film, Cape Fear, the director, Martin Scoreses made a massave change.  The crazed evil person was remade into a Bible-quoting, in your face Christian, and if you missed the point, a huge cross was tattooed across his back, and to affirm his point, in the attempted rape scene, he screams: “Are you ready to be born again?”

     What was being stated was if you are Christian and believe the Bible, you are certified mental case and most likely even dangerous.

     Scorsese was portraying the assumption that the media affirms the belief that religion is harmful to mental health. It was Sigmund Freud who held that belief in God was a neurosis, and academia has embraced that at all levels.    

     There was a study conducted by David Larson which came to some very different conclusions. In his published research he held that the empirical date showed this view had no basis in fact. The opposite was the truth.  Religious people  were actually healthier than the general population, both mentally and physically.

    Expanding his original research, Larson found that nineteen out of twenty such studies that were conducted along the same line, showed a positive role of faith in preventing alcoholism.  Fifteen out of sixteen studies showed a positive role also in reducing suicide indicating that religious commitment was identified with lower rates of mental disorder, drug use and both premarital sex and sex outside of marriage.  One study showed that those who regularly attended a place of worship had on average lower blood-pressure.

    The down side that Lawson found was that those who are believers of the teaching of the Christian faith but do not practice it, do experience greater stress. People who believe in God but who neglect Worship service attendance show higher rates of anxiety than the general population.

 His conclusion was that the inconsistent Christian suffers greater stress than the consistent atheist.  The study did show that the committed Christians rate their happiness higher than that of the general population.  My conclusion after reviewing his work was that the most miserable person of all are the ones who knows the truth….and choose another way to live their lives.