Effect Of Religion On Society And Law

With more than 85% of the world's population being religious, it is clear that religion plays a very huge part in the way people live their lives throughout the world today. Religion entails the belief that there are things that are sacred and practices are centered upon them and a moral community that results form these practices and beliefs.

Every living creature in the world must at one point lose their lives. Most people in the world fear death more than anything else. I am one of the people with the greatest fear of death. In order to fight this fear, I always turn to the Catholic church (the largest religion in the world) and its teachings. In other words, ultimate meanings are delivered by religion. To face this fear, I always ask myself these two questions, why are humans on earth and what is our purpose on earth. I know it does not make so much sense to atheists, but the holy Catholic church believes that all human beings suffer due to the sins committed by Adam and Eve and that our purpose here is to serve the Almighty and one day we shall be re-united with Him in heaven.

The believe of things such as these provides not only hope but only emotional comfort to the lives of all catholic believers. These emotional comfort not only provides in times of hardships such as during death and illness but also assists the believers to ease their pain during the time of crisis.

In short, religion offers some sort of map or guidelines for people to follow in their day to day lives. Taking in perspective the catholic church, the two greatest commandments are, the love of God has to be the greatest and the second is more of a guideline on how to live with people in the society. It is encourages believers to treat each other fairly and to do unto others what we would want them to do unto you. All believers strive to live by these laws hence showing the extent to which the society is affected by religion.

In other regions of the world, all laws of the land follow the doctrine teachings in the holy book. A good example is the Middle East countries which follow the Sharia laws. Sharia, simply means moral code and religious law of a prophetic religion and is largely associated with Islam in the English language. These are laws that are dictated in the Holly Quran. From the way people dress, talk and socialize, everything is done in accordance with the Quran. Other regions such as Nepali, Buddhists traditions also determine the way of life hence showing the effect of religion on law.