Religion should guide us to relate with 

By Msgr. John Wynand Katende

Posted on: Saturday, 30th August 2025

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” - St. Augustine of Hippo. 

Anthropologists acknowledge that human beings are religious by nature. Despite scientific and technological advancements, religion continues to play a major role in answering mankind’s cravings. 

There seems to be no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacredness, faith, and a supernatural being or beings. 

Many religions seem to be man-centered. The faithful base their relationship with the supreme being/God on human endeavors/works. They expect a heavenly reward through strict adherence to the tenets that religion prescribes. Monotheists (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) subscribe to the worship of one God, are, fundamentally, God-centered. 

However, by Jesus’ time, Judaism, religion had overlapped a relationship with God. The religious leaders had perverted God’s basic Law of love into human-invented traditions and a works-based religion that alienated people from Him. Recalling his time as a Pharisee, Paul relates how he belonged to “the strictest sect of our religion” (Acts 26:5). On embracing Christ, he rubbishes his former religion. 

Christianity is uniquely a relationship that God has established with His children, through Jesus Christ. God is the aggressor and man is the beneficiary. We are able to love God “because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). 

According to Christianity, sin separates us from His presence, and sin must be punished. There is nothing we can do to make ourselves right with God. But, because God loves us, He took our punishment upon Himself. All we must do is accept God’s gift/grace of salvation through faith. 

Jesus guides us from the religious world of dos and don'ts, rules and rituals, toward a more intimate relationship with God. It also involves living a pure life, separated from the sin of the world and charity for those in need (James 1:27). He calls Christians “friends” and gives us the beatitudes that define His identity and that of His followers. 

Jesus invites us to know God personally, because we are meant to become unified with Him. We get to know God by meditating on His real presence in our lives, in the Scripture and in other encounters, provided by the Church. Having become with the Eternal One, one’s share in eternal life is guaranteed. 

God desires that  Christians are adopted into the family of God (John 3:3). When we join God’s family, the Holy Spirit comes to live inside our hearts. His children must be holy as He is holy, by growing in grace and knowledge of Him (1 Peter 1:16). That is not a mere religion; it is a relationship.

Pathetically, human history is scarred with religious conflicts and deaths; causing suspicion whether they all worship God in spirit and truth or, instead, idolize their different religions. In many cases, religion has been manipulated in the interest of culture, greed for territory, resources or power (Meicpearse). Others simply become aggressively intolerant against other’s religious beliefs or practices. Religious-based violence appeals to mature religion. 

Mature religion advocates for dialogue, reconciliation, peace, love and compassion. Through interfaith dialogue efforts, we learn that all religions have only Satan as their common enemy. Those who resort to violence in the name of God or in the name of religion, are agents of Satanic.

Jesus chose to engage people of other faiths into dialogue. His dictum “Whoever is not against us is for us” invites us to to acknowledge good ideas and good work by others, regardless of their religious, ethnic or political backgrounds (Mark 9:40). Religious leaders have a great responsibility to educate their followers to do likewise.

St. Francis of Assisi is highly respected by different religions a hero of interfaith/inter-religious dialogue, for peaceful coexistence. After failure through crusades to realize access to the Holy Land by Christians, he, in 1219, initiated an  interfaith dialogue encounter with the Sultan Malik al-Kamil who ruled over Palestine. 

Through love and respectful listening, as well as the willingness to be changed by an aspect of truth expressed by another, Francis and the Sultan were able to establish that the truth is not the property of a single person or tradition or religion; it can be found at the core of each person. Henceforth, Christians could peacefully make pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

In 1986 Pope St. John Paul II initiated and promoted a forum for different religious leaders, in Assisi, to engage deeply in interfaith dialogue as learners, not converters, and desire to celebrate as fully as possible the many paths to God.