The essence of an image consists in the fact
that it represents something… with the fact that it goes beyond itself… thus
the image of God means, first of all, that the human being cannot be closed in
on himself. If he attempts this he betrays himself. To be the image of God
implies relationality. It is the dynamic that sets the human being in motion
toward the totally Other. Hence it means the capacity for relationship; it is
the human capacity for God.
Joseph Ratzinger, In the Beginning
Reflection – ‘What is the point of religion,
anyway?’ In a novel I read on my holidays, one of the characters, completely
steeped in secular values and irreligious, asked this perfectly reasonable
question. What is the purpose of prayer in human life, of religious observance,
of turning towards God?
It is an
important question – one might argue that it is the question the world
poses to the Church right now. What are we bringing to the table? We have to
avoid, it seems to me, giving answers that are utilitarian in nature. Religion
helps us to be more peaceful… or helps us to work for social justice… or makes
us more generous… or creates a more stable society…
All of
these may be true to greater or lesser degrees, but none of these is the
‘point’ of religion. Prayer, and hence God, are not tools we use to achieve
some greater purpose, some end of our own. This quote from Ratzinger gives us
the real answer. The real answer to the question, hard as this may be to
present to a thoroughly secular person, is that the point of God is that God is
the point of everything.
We are
not religious people because we hope to gain some other good from being
religious—having our prayers answered so that we get what we want, or some
variation on that. We are religious people because we believe that the purpose
of creation is to enter into relationship with God.
Really
the question is not ‘what is the point of religion?’ The question is ‘what is
the point of anything?’ Life can be about professional success… but why bother
with that? Life can be about happy family relationships… but why bother with that?
Life can be about cramming in as much pleasure as we can into each moment
(YOLO!)… but why bother with that?
At each
twist and turn of trying to find some ultimate meaning and purpose to life, we
are always confronted with human finitude, with the inevitability of death and
the insufficiency of strictly human goods to genuinely satisfy us. What is the
point of anything, really, unless everything is pointing us beyond the human
and the finite and the mortal?
Once we
open the door to that other reality, to God and to faith and to prayer, then
everything becomes charged with meaning—our work, our loves, our families, our
pleasures all become taken up in a world of meaning that is not doomed to the
futility of the grave.
The
point of religion, of faith, is that it gives a sure and solid and
indestructible meaning to everything else in life, and without this meaning,
everything else is really very fragile. It is quite a mysterious affair—it is
only when we allow for the invisible, the unprovable, that which no eye has
seen and no ear has heard, that which seems to be so insubstantial and
fleeting, that all the things that are near at hand, obvious, plain, become
fully solid and real with a lasting meaning and purpose.
Secularism
has turned its back on the invisible and indemonstrable matters of God and the
spirit in favor of what can be proven and known to the senses. Ironically, we
find ourselves in a world devoid of lasting value or purpose, a world of brute
matter and physical forces, a world where there is no meaning save what our
frail and feeble humanity can impose on it for a short span of years.
Faith
allows for this one element of impenetrable mystery—God!—and so the whole
universe becomes charged with crystalline purpose and goodness, all the brute
matter echoes like a resonating glass vibrating with the music of the angels,
and all of humanity becomes the great priesthood of the cosmos, offering praise
and worship to the Creator and so enacting that which is the utter fulfillment of
all creation, the utter fulfillment of our own human destiny and vocation, the
absolute and final and endless point of all that is.
And that
is the point of religion.