Faith and action: How can reliance on God be combined with a genuine pursuit of success?

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]I was in middle school. I remember an atheist boy telling me that religion was just something that humans made up to make themselves feel better about being poor.

[00:00:08]And as a super devout Roman Catholic at that time who had also experienced multiple home evictions, um yeah, this was kind of a scary thought to think about. And though I didn't know it at the time, this boy's beliefs are actually very similar to one of Karl Marx's opiate of the masses theory.

[00:00:28]Marx's opiate of the masses theory claims that religion is simply a tool that serves the higher class and puts working class people in a position of false hope and false consciousness. It's a way to provide working people with the illusion of comfort and justice when in actuality they're being exploited. Now, this brings me to a topic that I've heard not only in Catholic rhetoric or in Catholic spaces, but also in a