Why Your Butt Should Be in Church

Because if your butt isn't, you're more likely to become a haterbutt.

Yep... it's documented:

Ok, now that I’ve got your attention, the study doesn’t say that… exactly.  But it does show that non- religious persons are much less willing or able to forgive themselves or others than religious people.

…those who leave a religious tradition entirely (i.e., those who were religiously affiliated and no longer were at the time of the survey) are less likely to forgive themselves and others compared to those who stay in a religious tradition. What seems to matter in promoting forgiveness, then, is that a person adheres to a religion or denomination; on the whole, the religiously unaffiliated have less of a propensity to forgive.

Previous research has pretty well settled the notion that religious people are more forgiving of themselves and others than non-religious people, but this study wanted to understand what the mechanism of that forgiveness really is.  The study identified three factors that contribute to the more forgiving nature of religious people, the degree to which you exhibit these factors as a religious person tends to determine how forgiving you will be of both  yourself and others.

 (1) one’s relational disposition toward God—in other words, beliefs about who God is, what God does, and the appropriate interactions a believer should have with God;

In other words, the degree to which you believe God is a loving, forgiving God (as opposed to an angry, spiteful God) has an impact on the level of forgiveness you display toward both yourself and others.

(2) the extent to which a person imitates God’s qualities and actions; and

Fairly self-explanatory.  The more you feel you are obliged to treat others as God treats you (assuming point #1; i.e., that you think God is loving and forgiving) the more likely you are to be forgiving to yourself and others.

(3) the extent to which a person believes her religion (and therefore its injunctions and teachings) is or should be pervasive in life.

Also pretty straight-forward.  The degree to which you see your religion as a blueprint for living as opposed to merely a path to personal enlightenment/reflection (as is the case with those who are “spiritual but not religious”), the more forgiving of yourself and others you will tend to be.

If these factors have a significant impact on forgiveness levels, it also makes sense why non-religious people may have a harder time forgiving. 

You'll not firgive yourself if you miss reading the rest.

Trust me on this.

Would I lie?