Why do we need the church? Why do we even need religion?
All those moral precepts put forth in the 10 Commandments, the Golden Rule, the idea of helping the poor and the suffering, don't you think we would have figured that out on our own without some all-powerful deity to tell us?
I mean, do I really need a God to tell me that killing is bad?
So please tell me, because I am honestly curious, why do we need religion?
The purpose of the creation may be to make a moral environment, so that humanity can be tested. Nobody needs to be told that murder (rather than killing) is wrong, or theft, or any action that gives an individual advantage at the expense of the group. That is natural law, provided by the molecules and energy that we all depend on. People who have no religion whatever have consciences simply because they live here in this universe. Just think, we could live in a condition where there is no such thing as danger, need, hardship, where merely to desire is to be gratified, instantly. Why not?
Before Christ, or Abraham, people had not only consciences, but the view that conscience outlasted the body, and that one would be answerable in an afterlife for one's deeds in this life. Since Christ, people have been even more convinced that conscience outlasts the body, and that there will be a future reckoning with that conscience; hence the involvement of many in supposedly Christian matters over the last 2000 years.
When Moses took the tablets down the mountain, he wasn't telling anyone what they did not know,
except for the sabbath commandment- which is the clue to the whole Bible. The seventh day sabbath (rest) was just a pre-figurement, a promise, of the total and permanent salving of the conscience, the rest from guilt, guilt that we all of us ought to have, like the people before Abraham. (Many of us today need to catch up with them.) The true sabbath is the complete rest of the conscience that belongs to those who have put their trust in the work of Christ on the cross, who no longer have those commandments, or the commandments of natural law, nagging at them.
That's why we need religion- though it's not religion in the sense of being 'religious'. The real purpose of the Christ was and is to give people freedom and motivation to live as they should, so that no-one will take any action that gives them advantage at the expense of the group. That is
all that matters in this world- people doing what is right for all, which is called love. Love is not sloppy, it's quite often tough, quite often unpopular, strangely enough, but it's always wise.
The church is just the collection of those very few who have decided to love, and by mutual help they increase loving action in the world. However, finding the church is not easy, due to simulation, and personal behavior is often not easy to check out.
