Yes, you need to understand how JIRA uses the "resolution" field, and you do need to use it. It is a display for the user to say "why we have finished with this issue and are not going to do anything else with it". But it does more.
Status is not really a field, it is an indicator to tell the user where an issue is in the process. But the status itself has little to say about whether an issue has been dealt with and you don't really want to do anything more with it. Even if you call a status "closed", "ended", "done", "rejected", etc, that does not tell JIRA that the issue is ended.
That is what Resolution does. In database terms, Resolution is a field on all issues. If it is empty then then JIRA treats the issue as "open", and displays unresolved on the issue. If it has any content, then JIRA treats it as "done", dropping it from "stuff we need to do" reports, striking out the issue number in many places, putting ticks next to them on sub-task displays and so-on.
You need to be aware of that when you are working with workflows. If you look at the default workflow, it does two things that you'll need to think about - it has post-functions on "reopen" transitions that clear the resolution (note - not "set it to unresolved", but actually empty it out), and it has a "resolve" screen on transitions that go into status that you want to treat as "closed". The resolve screen contains the resolution field, so it gets set when the transition is used. The third thing you can do is explicitly set it with a post function (e.g. if you have a transition for "reject issue", then instead of asking the user to set "rejected" as the resolution, it's easier to set it for them)
Even if you choose never to use resolution, you should still set/clear it in your workflow. Or JIRA will show "closed" issues as still needing attention, whatever your closed workflow status are.
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