Religion and philosophy share one precise goal: to explore and explain all the unseen causes behind the visible world of human experience. Philosophy seeks to explain these causes strictly by rational methods. Religion, while it does not repudiate the rational approach to the invisible world, does allege that reason by itself is unable to penetrate the ultimate mysteries. Religion claims to have guidance from above through sacred inspiration and revelations granted to the founders of religions. Neither philosophy nor science can make such claims. It is therefore in religion alone that we might find a path to the Absolute that escapes every search of philosophy and science.
Traditionally the term “religion” refers to the worship of gods, or God. But certainly “religion” runs deeper than that. Its definition must encompass the idea that some values are to be held sacred and inviolable. Even atheists can be so devout about atheism that they will make it the guiding light of their lives, however dim that light may be. In that sense, if there be no gods is taken as an absolute, the atheist might loosely be thought of as worshiping an idea for which he will sacrifice even the respect of the many who worship their living God. In 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed this notion; it classified atheism as a religion when it is “a sincere and meaningful belief occupying in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God.”
The Supreme Court’s decision is flawed in certain ways. Atheism asserts no such thing as an Absolute. It cannot even assert absolutely that there is no God. Likewise, it does not rely at all upon divine inspiration or revelation. Atheism by itself offers no more insights or code of ethics. It offers no particular consolation for the difficulties of life, nor any insight into the final fate of the soul, most often denying there even is such a thing. It is, however, true that atheism is possessed as a powerful conviction, like that produced by religion; but unlike religion, atheism tends to increasingly weaken as the hour of death approaches. Put simply, there are many more ways that atheism is not like a religion than there are ways that it is.
As Ronald Knox points out in The Hidden Stream, it is not so much that a man possesses a religion, but that his religion possesses a man. There is some truth in this. The Jesuits, I believe, have an old saying: “You can take the child out of the Church, but you cannot take the Church out of the child.” That fact alone accounts for why so many people who give up their faith sooner or later find their way on a journey back to God. After all, the Latin verb religare mean to bind or tie down. A man can be so bound to his religion, or rather his religion bound to him, that while he might yield in other matters given sufficient methods of persuasion, with respect to his religion he might willingly go to prison or to his death. Those who take vows, such as those of poverty, chastity, and obedience, we refer to as religious … because they have allowed themselves to be bound by a certain way of life that best proves the hold religion has on them.
A person is possessed by his religion much as a child is possessed by his parents. His religion feeds him spiritually; it teaches him what Christ would teach him; it shows him the difference between right and wrong; it informs his conscience and strengthens the notion of duty; it offers him hope in troubled times; it consoles him when he is weary or grieves; it celebrates with him when he is wedded and brings children into the world; it blesses and dignifies the place where he is buried; it comforts his survivors. The Church stands with us at all the major milestones of our lives, and in between as well. In other words, it has a profound hold on us that we can only by the fiercest rebellion shake off.
Those who do shake off that hold, who give up their religion because they want to be free and master of their own fortunes, little realize that they have not entered freedom, but rather enslavement to a new master who cunningly has persuaded them, as the serpent did Adam and Eve, that they will be empowered to overcome the Law and become a new Law unto themselves. They do not realize that they have begun to carry a new burden, one so heavy it will sooner or later remind them of what Jesus had taught them: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
Yes, Christ does offer us a burden. We can take his burden or we can take Satan’s.
When we look at those in prison for their crimes, we see those who have traded the burden offered by Christ for that other more onerous one; the one that binds them to a different Master; the one that binds them in handcuffs and leg irons and encloses them in a tiny cell; the one that brings long-term separation from family and friends; the one that reminds them, day after day, as they stare at the blank walls around them, that they foolishly took on the greatest burden after all … and why?
Because they want to believe there is a better and more handsome god to worship … the proud and grinning demon who loves to look back at them in every mirror they pass … Narcissus, the god within.