Why Religion?

Some people might ask Catholics (or any Christians for that matter) why we have an organized religion. These such people might grant that God exists but they believe that we don't need to belong to any group or hold to any specific beliefs in order to give Him the worship He deserves or to receive the benefits and gifts He desires to bestow upon us. These people might say that they are just "spiritual" and not "religious". So, we should ask, why do we need organized religion? What purpose does it serve in the life of man? Let's dive right into this issue.


First of all, Catholics and all orthodox Christians believe that God our Creator made us humans for something greater than just this earthly life. We are not merely material beings but are spiritual/bodily creatures. And so, death is not the end-all of everything. The human soul lives on and has the high destiny to enter into something more amazing and wonderful than we could ever imagine: Life with God in the Kingdom of Heaven. In this life here on Earth, we are sojourners and travelers, making our way towards our future, heavenly destiny. Like any traveler on a journey, we need to be equipped with the supplies, maps, and weapons needed to successfully complete our quest towards Heaven. And so, we need an organized religion, given to us by God Himself, to reach our supernatural destiny.

We can apply our relationship with God to any relationship with other people we have in this life. Let's say you want to get to know a certain person better, be it an obscure aunt or uncle, a distant cousin, or some kid at camp. To get to know this person, you would talk to him or her and you would listen as well. It would obviously be a two-way conversation. With God, it is very similar and yet, different in many amazing and profound ways.

As Catholic Christians, we don't believe that God just leaves us to worship Him in any way we desire or see fit. We believe that God has revealed Himself to man and has throughout History made contact with humanity through Divine Revelation. We know that there was once a righteous man named Noah who found favor with God even amidst an evil and wicked people. God made a covenant with Noah; A bond of communion and promise between them.

Throughout the rest of the Old Testament, we read about how God constantly made covenants with different people. The Jewish people under the Law of Moses, also known as the Mosaic Law or the Torah, were part of the Old Covenant people of God. This Old and imperfect Covenant would later be fulfilled in the New Covenant established by our Lord Jesus Christ who said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).

To return back to life with God, we need our one Mediator Jesus Christ who bridges the infinite gap between God and man (1st Timothy 2:5). Also, we know from Scripture passages like 1st Corinthians 12:27, Romans 12:4-5, and Ephesians 4:4 that the Church is the Body of Christ. And so, in the Church, the family of God into which we are invited, we find every gift and grace that Christ wishes to give us for our sanctification and growth in communion with the Godhead.

We know that God made us for Himself. We are His and His alone. God is the perfect and all-encompassing end of man, not just for a select few, even, but truly each and every man in every age of the world. Hebrews 13:14 describes man's state here on Earth quite well: "For here we have no permanent city, but we seek for the city that is to come."

So, to pull these two themes together, the theme of religion and the theme of man's end or eschatological destiny, we come upon several very profound truths. First, as humans made and preserved in existence by God, we ought to give Him the highest honor and glory as Creator and Father of us all. We know from the natural order and from Divine Revelation that everything we have, enjoy, cherish and love comes to us from God Himself and His great and immeasurable love for us. We humans are different from every other creature in God's wonderful work of Creation in the fact that we are fashioned, as Genesis 1:26 says, in the image and likeness of the Triune God.

We know that our infinitely skilled and masterful Creator God gives unto every created thing an end towards which it is directed. He is like the mighty archer who directs every one of his arrows to reach and attain their ordained targets. Following the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, we see that all of God's creatures fulfill His designs and callings, humans freely and nonhuman creatures non-freely. And, given the realities of sin and evil and of righteousness and goodness, we know that it is our duty and calling from on high to strive for God who, being all-good, desires perfect communion with man and indeed wills the perfect happiness of every single man.

Now, we can begin to grasp how religion relates deeply to the end of man and our eternal beatitude with God in the city of God, Heaven. Since we are rational creatures capable of contemplation and making free, volitional choices either for or against God, our high good and source of all fulfillment, we know that we have the inherent vocation (coming from the Latin word meaning 'to call') to know, love, and serve God in this life in order that we might be forever happy with Him in the next life. Religion, henceforth, serves the great and honorable purpose of informing us of our duties towards God and also, by the grace of God, to empower us to attain and fulfill our supernatural end and calling.

Religion is indeed a virtue, one of piety and obedience; It is a habitual quality which directs man to the service of the good, indeed, man's highest good. As the English Archbishop William Ullathorne wrote in his work Humility and Patience, "The Christian virtues are the feet and wings whereby the soul moves in the direction of her final end." And so, as with any virtue, religion must be adhered to and practiced diligently by every man in light of the good it is inherently concerned with. It involves believing with all conviction every one of the truths which God has revealed to man and also doing everything which God has ordained man to accomplish. We must not grumble or grow uneasy with this calling, no matter how hard it might be.

In final consideration, life here on Earth is not forever; It is not the end-all of everything. As I said earlier, man is a traveler, making his way through a harsh and foreign land. We know that nothing in this life will fulfill and satisfy our many and never-ending desires for truth, goodness, beauty, and ultimately, the experience of true happiness. In religion, which is really nothing other than man's bond and covenant with God, we get a taste of the future glory and happiness of the Kingdom of Heaven and we have a place in the family of God. Finally, I shall end this post today with a wonderful quote from Saint Peter Damian: "To the fount of life eternal cries the soul with longing thirst, and the spirit, flesh imprisoned, seeks the bars of flesh to burst; Strives to gain that heavenly country, exiled now and sin-accursed."