It’s a phrase I’ve heard a lot since starting to share my faith: “You might need religion,” the argument goes, “But I’m a good person without anything organized.” Or “I’m a good person without God.” Or “If you need religion, that’s fine for you, but I can raise my kids to know right and wrong without God.”

I chuckle when I hear these sorts of arguments because a few years ago, I would’ve been the person making them.

But I’ve since learned the hypocrisy and misunderstanding of my “rationality” at the time. Without any God, you forfeit any objective morality. You actually can’t be a good person without God because without God, there is no right and wrong, good and evil. You can be “spiritual but not religious” (which is yet another nasty problem to have) but not truly moral. Take away the objective base and you’re left with a house of cards setting on quicksand.

Want to pass morality onto your kids without a basis in the divine? Good luck. Take away the objective morality of God and instead of right and wrong being rooted in a higher power, you have what can be boiled down to a mostly arbitrary set of rules that “Mom and Dad want me to follow.” And what do teenagers love most than to do the opposite of what their parents tell them? Ask me how I know…

Enter Episode 18 of The Catholic Mama podcast. For anyone sharing their faith, especially online but also with friends and family, hearing this argument is quite common, and I think you’ll find this episode helpful in tackling this sort of dissent.

You can download the episode directly here. Or listen over on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play.

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