 | Charlie Traffas has been involved in marketing, media, publishing and insurance for more than 40 years. In addition to being a fully-licensed life, health, property and casualty agent, he is also President and Owner of Chart Marketing, Inc. (CMI). CMI operates and markets several different products and services that help B2B and B2C businesses throughout the country create customers...profitably. You may contact Charlie by phone at (316) 721-9200, by e-mail at ctraffas@chartmarketing.com, or you may visit at www.chartmarketing.com. |
***image1:left***QUESTION: Are religion and theism effectively the same thing, such that every religion is theistic and every theist is also religious?
ANSWER: I respond: To understand precisely what we are dealing with, let's commence by going to the dictionary. Religion is defined as: 1) a belief in a divine or superhuman power or principle, usually thought of as the creator of all things; 2) the manifestation of such belief in worship, ritual, conduct, etc.; 3) Any system of religious faith or practice, e.g. the Jewish
religion; 4) Anything that elicits devotion, zealor dedication; Theism is defined as: Belief
in a god or gods; 2) Belief in a personal God as creator and supreme ruler of the universe.
Accordingly, every theist is also religious; but not every religion is theistic. The very word theism indicates belief in a god, being formed from the Greek word "theos," which means God. The word religion is formed from the Latin word "religare," meaning: to tie or bind together two or more things. Usually, this word refers to binding a person in faith and loyalty to God, or to whatever a person substitutes in place of God. Whatever may be the principal goal of that person's life, that which is the basis of their morality, is God, or their
god. Thus we might say: "Politics is his
religion, or Socialism is her religion, or the pursuit of success is his/her religion." For the miser: money is his god. For the hedonist: pleasure is her god. For the glutton: good food and drink is his god. For the lazy: relaxation and fun is her god. For those exceedingly vain and unduly proud: vanity and fame is their god. In themselves all material things are good, being created by God for the use of human beings. It is the abuse of material things that is wrong. The pursuit of those things becomes for people, whose hearts are set on those things, a kind of religion. But that kind of religion is not theistic as such.
However, those persons whose hearts are directed to some divinity -- whether to the true God or some other deity -- and who worship with prayers and ritual that divinity: such worship is a form of religion. If, in fact, a person really believes that what they are pursuing is a divinity, and that pursuit involves some ritual and prayers, then we can say that for them: the object of their life is a god. In such a case, theism and religion are identified. That can happen when a person totally ignores the true God in his/her dedicated lust for power (e.g. Stalin) or for a particular person (e.g. Augustus Caesar or Helen of Troy) or for control of the world (e.g. Hitler and Satan). Persons addicted to drugs or gambling, who dedicate all their energy to acquiring money for the "high" attached to indulging such addictions, are practicing a kind of pseudo-religion.
In our times, as in ancient Greece, the cult of athletics - with its rituals and prayers -- seems a form of religion, which is not theistic. The goal of some game-enthusiasts, as of some financiers, is: winning at all costs (e.g. athletes who use steroids), gaining as much profit as possible (e.g. the corporate executives who voted for themselves obscene salaries and bonuses, while ruining their companies in the process), destroying one's opponents regardless of the methods employed (e.g. the mafia). There is plenty of ritual and preying involved in those games, and they are certainly not theistic.