Hope and prey

I read a report recently that said 85% of the world's population associates themselves with a religion. Given that many religious folk spend much of their time devoted to their god, and that most religions espouse kindness, honesty and fairness, how can there be such global problems of corruption, cruelty and unfairness?

Religions are either doing a terrible job at teaching their doctrines, or, despite what followers would like to think, teachings cannot override other things that influence life.

South Sudan is a highly devout, mostly Christian country. Corruption and governance are woeful. A small band of leaders have prolonged the war and drained the country of capital, stockpiling millions in offshore accounts, ready to flee to the US or South Africa if the regime changes and if they one day face prosecution. A group of people underneath the senior leadership but still influential in government and business are highly highly corrupt, and count as very wealthy in South Sudanese terms.

Most of these influential people drip (literally: bling) with ill-gotten wealth yet worship God as committed Christians. It's hypocrisy of the highest order. Similar stories could be told of the elite in Buddhist Cambodia, Muslim Pakistan, or Christian Haiti. It's not exceptional to the South Sudanese context, which is an extreme example, but common to many countries at peace.

Why don't these people renounce their religion? They can't all fight inner demons and suppress them. They can't all successfully separate their acts from the beliefs they profess in church/temple/mosque. They must be living with constant internal conflict unless their religious values are pure lip service.

It's a harder situation to examine when people are poorer, when salaries are not being paid, when a currency is worth sixty times less than it was three years ago and when the cost of eggs continues to skyrocket. However the disingenuousness when someone tells you a deliberate falsehood, the callousness of extorting money from motorists and the narcissistic wielding of power, all of which have happened today, have crossed the line from acceptable behaviour.

All of the people from these examples would consider themselves committed Christians and would view the godless as more of a scourge on society. I am left wondering what is the true role of Christianity for these people? A sort of hope for the future and protection against bad stuff rather than examination of the hypocrisy of day to day life? A necessary lifeline somewhere like South Sudan? A lifestyle without which people would feel worse because they'd have no way to atone for their sins?

Am I trying to conflate what I understand of religion from a very western perspective? It's entirely feasible that religiousness, which is a cultural practice and lifestyle, in many situations could never overcome the need to go against religious teachings when it's a question of survival and negative innate human traits such as greed and violence can surface. This is understandable: following a religion is taught; the human need to survive is innate.

When humans labelling themselves as religious go beyond survival into corruption, crime and cruelty, it's a sham that detracts from the good work that religious groups can do, and highlights those individuals as hypocrites.