The Purpose of Religion

Vouthon said:

The early church father Lactantius (c. 250 – c. 325) offered a definition in his Divine Institutes which I've always been rather partial to:


Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VII/Lactantius/The Divine Institutes/Book V/Chap. VI - Wikisource, the free online library

"Divine religion, which alone effects that man should esteem man dear, and should know that he is bound to him by the tie of brotherhood, since God is alike a Father to all, so as to share the bounties of the common God and Father with those who do not possess them; to injure no one, to oppress no one, not to close his door against a stranger, nor his ear against a suppliant, but to be bountiful, beneficent, and liberal...

Truly it is among those who are ignorant of wars, who maintain concord with all, who are friendly even to their enemies, who love all men as brethren, who know how to restrain their anger, and to soothe every passion of the mind with calm government"

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Of course, that's an excessively idealistic take on the purpose of religion - but I do like it....

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That wonderful quote brings to mind James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

SalixIncendium said:

What, in your view, is the purpose of religion?

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I don't think there's one purpose or set of purposes for religion. Indeed, many religions have competing objectives. They have very different origins and were founded for different purposes.

Judaism is concerned with God's relationship with God's chosen people, their history and culture, God's Law, and the prophecies and promises concerning them

Christianity is concerned with doing good, living righteously, and our relationship with God - especially reconciling sinful man back to God.

Buddhism is concerned with suffering and how to escape it despite samsara - the cycle of death and rebirth.

Islam was founded on the belief that all the major religions and religious figures were legitimate - but became corrupted. So they put forth one final prophet whose teachings alone supposedly would never be corrupted like the rest.

Wicca is focused on nature

etc.

Another Biblical formulation of purpose:

"... that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him." (Acts 17:28)

SalixIncendium said:

What, in your view, is the purpose of religion?

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To allow people to understand and worship the Divine.

SalixIncendium said:

What, in your view, is the purpose of religion?

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Happiness.

SalixIncendium said:

What, in your view, is the purpose of religion?

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Anyone interested in what religion/myths are really for should read The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers:

MOYERS: Why myths? Why should we care about myths? What do they have to do with my life?

CAMPBELL: My first response would be, "Go on, live your life, it's a good life -- you don't need mythology." I don't believe in being interested in a subject just because it's said to be important. I believe in being caught by it somehow or other. But you may find that, with a proper introduction, mythology will catch you. And so, what can it do for you if it does catch you?

One of our problems today is that we are not well acquainted with the literature of the spirit. We're interested in the news of the day and the problems of the hour. It used to be that the university campus was a kind of hermetically sealed-off area where the news of the day did not impinge upon your attention to the inner life and to the magnificent human heritage we have in our great tradition -- Plato, Confucius, the Buddha, Goethe, and others who speak of the eternal values that have to do with the centering of our lives. When you get to be older, and the concerns of the day have all been attended to, and you turn to the inner life -- well, if you don't know where it is or what it is, you'll be sorry.

Greek and Latin and biblical literature used to be part of everyone's education. Now, when these were dropped, a whole tradition of Occidental mythological information was lost. It used to be that these stories were in the minds of people. When the story is in your mind, then you see its relevance to something happening in your own life. It gives you perspective on what's happening to you. With the loss of that, we've really lost something because we don't have a comparable literature to take its place. These bits of information from ancient times, which have to do with the themes that have supported human life, built civilizations, and informed religions over the millennia, have to do with deep inner problems, inner mysteries, inner thresholds of passage, and if you don't know what the guide-signs are along the way, you have to work it out yourself. But once this subject catches you, there is such a feeling, from one or another of these traditions, of information of a deep, rich, life-vivifying sort that you don't want to give it up..........

CAMPBELL: Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts -- but if you read the other ones, you
begin to get the message. Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. It tells you what the experience is. Marriage, for example. What is marriage? The myth tells you what it is. It's the reunion of the separated duad. Originally you were one. You are now two in the world, but the recognition of the spiritual identity is what marriage is. It's different from a love affair. It has nothing to do with that. It's another mythological plane of experience. When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is recognition of a spiritual identity. If we live a proper life, if our minds are on the right qualities in regarding the person of the opposite sex, we will find our proper male or female counterpart. But if we are distracted by certain sensuous interests, we'll marry the wrong person. By marrying the right person, we reconstruct the image of the incarnate God, and that's what marriage is.

He goes on and on about all sorts of topics and reasons on why and how myths are central to people in all stages of society.

Actually the book is all an interview and they are here transcribed so the entire book is here:
Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth | Shows | BillMoyers.com

Campbell was one, but by no means the only or most interesting, scholar to discuss mythology. He was prolific, while many others (Eliade, for instance) didn't produce nearly as much volume on the topic.

My view is that Campbell is a valuable read, but that he spent a career trying to fit everything he ever found in mythology into a preconceived model of myths.