Issue 142 Do we need Saints? January 3, 2014

Saints are those people who have been deemed by a religion worth remembering for their miracles and for being blessed by God. But does it go too far?

Why question: The reason why I question the need of saints is because we pray to them in the same way we might pray to God. At some point while I myself prayed, I began to question if I was violating the first commandment "thou shalt not worship any God before me." I remembered that Buddha was really a man who was elevated to god status by his followers and later worshipers. So my worry is that we are forgetting God and his first commandment in exchange for a bunch of gods whom we call saints. It was this fear that had the Vatican ban the cult of the dead in Europe where people would visit the mass graves from World War two and pray to these nameless victims. There was such a following where in places they had the people’s skulls on display where they would give the skulls gifts and even face them away from each other thinking they would talk. In Haiti, they worship a version of Christianity that integrates voodoo and have animals, and other natural spirits that are prayed too. Now in Mexico, they have alters to the Virgin Mary. All of these are people from the past or spirits that are slowly elevated to the status of a God. As such the Catholic Church will periodically warn and eventually ban such practices. So if Saints and the like invite such behavior, then why have them.

The reason: Saints exist for a purpose. They are there to serve as life examples in the same way that Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi serve as people’s idols or hero's. We learn from there mistakes and try to emulate their good points. It is all about being worthy of Gods grace and maybe we too would be given a gift so as to impart a miracle. Some faiths completely remove saints completely for the aforementioned reasons, but they do serve a purpose. Even if you ban Saints as a whole, it does not mean that at some point people may try to elevate someone to the level of a god in the first place.

Conclusion: So the lesson here to my more religious readers is to ensure that you are not violating the first commandment or similar law in your own faith. I questioned my faith and do so constantly (though I do not consider myself all that religious) so as to better understand my self and my beliefs. Hopefully this helps you to question your own self to make yourself a better person.