War is said to either drive men away from God or into his arms. I can only imagine some of the things you had to watch or do in Vietnam as I was a child at that time, living not far away, but safely in Malaya.
But you are right about belief being predicated by peoples experiences. It was one reason why I had to leave the church and pursue a spiritual path which led me to the various traditions and to the awareness of how similar religions are, in a strange way. I was following Thomas Merton in doing so, although he was long dead by then. I was also led to believe that religion, including Christianity, had monastic beginnings, even if it was mixed. That is why it is hard for people caught up in everyday life to practise and why it seems so outlandish.
I question the existential threat that you see the people in the Bahamas are up against. The storm is still the storm, whether they believe or not. In fact, there are people that say that humanity only learns via confrontation, and that is one mighty confrontation. That is where we have to think things through.
We have spoken about dasein before. I understand the struggle with existence (or being) in the use of that word. All aspects of being cause a struggle with suffering in its various forms. Life is suffering, but there are ways to confront it. I read Peterson as saying that if you follow a few rules, you will find that existence aligns with you and things can get a bit easier, although the struggle stays. Buddha had some good ideas as well. It is the fact that there are ways to successfully struggle with being that is so astounding. I have read him as well as various other authors who have brought up the fact that things going right are some kind of miracle in a world that is caught up in decay and degeneration.
Closing that gap might be easier than you think, the problem is that it isn’t the solution that many Christians would want. If we could agree that the stories of the Bible have more to do with psychology than with history, we could pull the wisdom that is held in there out of the more dated stories. The value of the Bible is the thousand year tradition that rings true to life when you observe it that way and the message that the New Testament carries. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not a sensible thing to do. It is like felling a massive Hyperion, the grandparent of all tall trees, to have firewood.
I think we can’t ignore the fact that, since we have driven modern man out of the churches, there has been a degeneration of purpose. People are struggling to find meaning and we are seeing it in our societies. More people are depressive, suicidal or have other psychological disorders. Practitioners are saying that it is the lack of orientation and reduction of purpose to getting through the day. That is why it is true that religion is often a crutch that people lean on. When that, as in recent times, fails to support, or is corrupt, those being supported fall.
One could say, what’s it to me that these people are mentally ill? However, depression is something that sneaks up on people and can have purely somatic symptoms that have doctors baffled until it becomes clear that the cause is depression. It hits all kinds of people, not just those below the minimum wage or those reduced to beggars. It is also one reason why Jordan Peterson wrote his book, “12 Rules for Life” with a subtitle “An Antidote to Chaos”. There are human resources being lost to psychological disorders, not because they are incapable, but because they have lost direction.
I have always said, we live here and now, and hoping for something better on the other side is an option, but can’t be the prime motivator. It is this world, and our own space, that we have to put in order. The good news is that when a large group work together and align their purpose, 2 + 2 becomes 5. Unexpected things happen that improve conditions. They seem wondrous in the face of degeneration, decay and corruption. The problem is that to motivate people to do that, you have to have the bigger picture in view. That’s where a world view comes in.
I don’t think that it is possible to motivate in the way needed without a world view with defined goals and standards, complete with an interactive group that embodies that world view in what they do. That is where mutual obligation comes into the picture. Agreeing to do things based on that world view. God is then the conjectural eye in the sky, the meta-vision, and judge of all things.