Editorial June 19, 1989 Issue

What use is it, anyway?

Michael D. Rissler

This question is asked under many circumstances. It takes many forms, but you feel the question because it reduces an issue to an object—to be used. For example, read about how much it costs to raise a child and end up equating children with dollars and cents. Think about a career, and there comes perhaps too quickly to mind: How much can I make? How can I use it? Where will it take me?

Calculation is the word for this reductionism, and the process even gets passed along to religion. What can it do for me; what will it give me; how can it be used? How easy it can seem to reduce everything to a possession and then to believe that religion can be used rather than God served.

Well, you just can't reduce religion to this. Religion, real religion, is about ultimate values, things that can't be shrunk down to cost factors and mere uses and advantages, not really. Religion relates to conscience, honest conviction, and finally to the infinite worth of life itself in relation to God. And if it needs to be clarified before going further, there is nothing more useful to us.

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