Hence, Christianity offers the teaching that if one is faithful, there is the promise of eternal life and being free from all pain and suffering. Historically, the Christian response to poverty has been to strengthen the believer's faith in a better life to come. Some may say Marx was unfeeling when he put forward this view however it is noted that with this idea of being in perpetual bliss and going to a land where there are streets lined with gold individuals would gravitate towards religion as they would be "tired of staying down here".
Another way in which religion becomes the opiate of the people is that there is the justification of the social order and a person's position in it. God can be seen as creating and ordaining the social structure, as in the following lines of a Victorian hymn "All things bright and beautiful" - "The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God made them high and lowly, and ordered their estate." The social-conflict paradigm charges that religion promotes social inequality. Religion, as claimed by Marx, enforces stratification. This is seen where it serves the upper echelons of society as it keeps them at the top of the rung and the lower class remains at the bottom, so attention is diverted from the social inequalities. Marx states, "The religious world is but a reflex of the real world." For example, in Hinduism, there is the caste system, and it stratifies into layers of priests, rulers, merchants and servants with a large "outcast" group that does not fit---the untouchables. Likewise, in Christianity, there is a hierarchical structure. Furthermore, in almost every religion there is the dominance of males. One such example is seen particularly in the Islamic faith where Muslim women are said to be amongst the most oppressed on earth. They are given unimportant tasks and are relegated to the position of being unequal to their male counterparts.
