From an Angel’s PoV.
Big subject this! I’ve been wanting to write about this subject again for a long time, but I shied away from doing it. It seems there are lots of complications in this subject in need of untangling. Where do I even begin?
First of all, the terminology is problematic. If you talk about religion, you’re implying a religion among other (the world-) religions. Libraries full of books have been written about those religions, and further books still about comparing those religions.
When talking about Christianity ‘as a religion’, you’re implying that Christianity is a ‘religion’ among ‘other religions’. Yes? There’s no escape from that implication.
What are religions? Man made ways of connecting with deity (?). The questions arises, ‘is one religion better then the other?’. There is an assumption that in the end all religions lead to the same result (same place). In that view, the world religions are all equally matched, like political parties, and they are all ‘good’ and ‘needed’, and trying to get ‘your vote’. In the end it doesn’t matter which religion you follow, so goes the thinking, or whether you’re an ‘independent’; that’s fine too. It all goes in the grand democracy of philosophy. What ever works best for you.
If religion is ‘man’s attempt to reach/ please God’, then knowing & following Jesus is not a religion. Jesus’ arrival and mission on this planet was not invented by ‘man’.
Still, you could hardly refrain from calling Christianity a religion; it is. That seems right when you consider that there are (and have been) millions of people in the ‘Christian church’ many (if not most) of whom do not necessarily know and follow Jesus.
A while ago I began to compare religion to gravity, which comes with being on earth. No escape from gravity; in fact life on earth would be impossible without it. Without gravity, everything down here would just drift into space (if it wasn’t firmly fixed to the earth in some way) and die from the lack of oxygen.
The ‘down-side’ of gravity is that you get hurt when you fall; if you fall off a tall building you will get killed. Or, the other way around, you get killed by things falling on top of you, as in an earth quake. Tragic and terrible stuff. Yet, we need & want gravity. Life would be impossible without it.
I think religion can be compared to gravity. We cannot do without it; it helps us in many ways, but there are some very serious downsides to having religion around.
Another way in which you can compare religion to gravity is that religion is every where, even when you don’t see it, or expect it. People have a need to express their longing for eternity, or their amazement (wonder) that their lives in this realm are coming to an end. Our dreams take us outside the realm of our daily & ordinary lives, and in touch with realms that are there (inside & outside of us), but mostly hidden from us. In my view every living person has a need to express their longing & wonder in some way or other.
Honest expressions can be found in music, theater, film, art etc. They can also be found in scientific research, in sport, adventure, in social action (fighting disease, hunger, poverty, oppression etc.). Honest expressions of longing & wonder can even be found in worship where people are truly expressing their love for God.
However, there is also the dishonest expression, the false expression, the fake. This world is full of imitations and I see religion as an imitation of the real expression.
It’s very tempting to go for the fake; it’s quick & easy, doesn’t cost by far what the real, genuine expression costs. Religion is the imitation of the true expression, and therefor a cop-out or worse, a killer (of truth, of life, of love, joy& peace). A false god. But in some ways, and for some people religion is very attractive. Many people use it as a crutch to lean on, or as a power system that serves them well.
Jesus had many confrontations with the religious leaders of the day, and he exposed them for what they were: abusers of the people who were being led astray and held in bondage.
Going back to the comparison between religion and gravity, the comparison does not work so well, in that gravity is clearly and totally outside of us, while religion is also inside.
You can know that for sure when you see astronauts floating in space where there’s no gravity. There they are outside of gravity’s influence.
Religion is not only outside of us, but also inside of us. We can all get religious about something, and even those who claim not to be religious at all, are in fact religious in certain ways at certain times. (Expressed in being fanatical, or dumb, or repetitious, or sentimental, or legalistic etc.)
This tendency of getting religious (at certain times, in a certain way, possibly in certain places) could be compared to sin. That sound rather radical, but really I believe that this tendency to be (or to get) religious is NOT good, AND it is with(in) ALL of us; we All have the tendency to get religious, I think.
This tendency to get religious ALWAYS clouds (obscures) the things that are right and good and true.
I may have lost you by now. But please, hang in there with me.
Religion as in the organization of a faith expression (like Judaism) isn’t necessarily bad. The Christian church as an organized ‘religion’ isn’t necessarily bad, even though many terrible things have happened over the centuries in the name of the church. It is what the church leaders have done with their ‘religious’ powers that needs to be scrutinized and judged.
Religion as a power base, has done (still does) much evil (at different levels) from the deadly crusades in previous centuries (and the Pope’s co-operation with the German, Italian & Japanese Nazi killing machine in the 2nd world war) to the sexual abuse by Catholic priests etc.
Where-ever power (structures) go un-checked, abuse usually follows. Welcome to planet earth!
Jesus introduced the Kingdom of Heaven, which is an upside-down kingdom. The first will be last; it’s all about serving and turning away from POWER. Lets call this ‘power under’. This in itself is a huge subject, which deserves a great deal of attention.
Jesus said: “I am the truth, the way and the life. Follow me.”
In His upside-down Kingdom, we follow him to the cross where we die with him, to get resurrected with him (‘power under’).
Even within the Christian religion it is very easy to miss this truth altogether and have the wool pulled over your eyes by the religious system (power over).
The tendency to get religious, I believe, lives in every-body.
This tendency (to get religious) is (in my view) how the world religions have come into being. They are all power systems, usually build around an ‘inspired’ founder of the faith.
Most religions are completely man-made and have sprung through this infamous ability to get-religious. The same tendency has also infiltrated the Christian church, ever since there WAS a church!
Jesus confronted the Pharisees many times about the same thing: the Jewish religious leaders had added to the law (of Moses) a host of extra rules & laws. They LOVED being religious; it gave them tremendous POWER (over). And so they added massively to the laws given by Moses. This became a huge & impossible burden to the people.
Jesus stood up to this sinful practice in no uncertain terms.
The need (or desire) to get religious sits SO deep within people; it needs constant scrutinizing & cleaning out!
Sadly the church is FULL of religious practices and religious attitudes. Man made stuff that gets in the way of God’s Holy Spirit and the work the H.S. wants to do. This tendency (to get religious) sits SO deep that people don’t see it; to the point where you don’t see it in your own life (Pastor Rodney describes this as: ‘People think: My pooh don’t stink.’)
Churches gradually slip into all kinds of religious stuff, usually without the congregation noticing it. (A bit like a family living in a place that is dirty and has a bad smell, but none of the family notice it. But imagine getting invited to this house for a meal; you’ll have serious difficulty keeping the food down…)
You might walk off the street and into a church, during the Sunday service, and instantly feel a sense of panic, desperately wanting to get out of this place; it is SUCH a deadly environment! It’s happened to me several times, especially in the days before I became a follower of Jesus, but sadly also afterwards. At one time while living in London, UK, my wife, son & I, were looking for a ‘new’ church and we decided to visit a different church every Sunday. We did this for several Months. Some places we entered, we just could NOT stay until the service was over; we just HAD to get out- the place was so full of religiosity.
Religion (religiosity) can slowly choke the life out of people, out of a church, out of an entire church denomination; out of organized religion, the church. The good news is that the Holy Spirit is on the move around the globe and busting the road blocks of religion & tradition.
A new word here: tradition. While it’s great to have traditions, the dangers are always of those traditions becoming obstacles to happy & healthy living. Traditions need to be re-invented, to be given new meaning. Some traditions could be discarded, while it may be good to invent some new traditions. As a family we’ve developed some of our own traditions, and these are valuable to us, even though the value will change over time and so will those traditions.
I don’t think you can talk about religion in the same way. We don’t want to be inventing more religion. Still, within the given ‘religion’ we need to constantly re-discover what it is all about. It could well be that parts of our religious expression should be changed or even done away with. We need to constantly go back to the core of our (dare I say) religion, our FAITH, to that which is un-changeable, that which should be & must be un-changeable:
the heart of our faith, which has to be based on the truth, which is Jesus.
A new word here: faith. The Bible describes faith as ‘The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ (Hebrews 11:1)(What a great statement, right there!)
But faith is not restricted to Christians only.
Next to the Christian faith, there are the Islamic faith, the Jewish faith, and I suppose there are several more. When it comes to Hinduism, faith is perhaps not quite the right description; it’s vaguer, more diverse, and more like superstition (?).
In any case, when talking about faith it seems that we are scaling the discussion back somewhat from talking about religion.
When you step into an aircraft you trust (you have faith) that the plane has been correctly designed & built and that it will be correctly handled by the pilot. The aircraft and the pilot can truly be trusted. You put your faith in the true quality of the craft & pilot.
Faith must be based on truth. If it’s not, your faith will NOT serve you well; quite the opposite, it will lead you down the garden path.
Faith is not blind, it is not dumb, and it is not mute. Faith is active if it is anything at all.
Faith built on truth (Jesus), and practiced actively is a faith that can ‘move mountains’.
If faith is not built on truth, it will be destructive eventually.
Faith (in the truth which is Jesus) is there to be practiced, as opposed to practicing religion. Religion doesn’t need any practice, and when practicing religion, people are merely following man made rules and customs, while being led astray, away from God & truth! Truth is essential; without it we will end up living a lie; a life (and a world) in darkness. We are desperate for light & truth to see a brighter world and have better lives.
Throughout the Old Testament we read how God interacted with certain individuals and gradually built a lasting relationship with a people that he called his own; a committed (covenant) relationship based on love and respect (fear of God). An organized system was needed (from the days of Moses) to help the (Hebrew) people understand this relationship and be faithful to it. In a sense this was the beginning of the Hebrew (Jewish) religion. A religion for good and for bad, like a necessary evil. Since this world is a ‘fallen world’ the expression and organization of this covenant relationship would be a faulty system from the start, and vulnerable to human abuse.
Obviously God knew this, He knows all, but choose the making of the covenant through the 10 commandments and the establishment of the temple with all that this involved, even though God always knew that power hungry people would abuse and subvert the intentions of the covenant & temple. It was people really who turned the Hebrew faith into the Jewish religion, not God.
In the same way, Jesus did not come to establish a new religion; people did that, and God has simply allowed it. People need to organize themselves, and this is a fallen world; we constantly drift away from the truth, and God graciously gives us room. He is not a dictator; he is a loving God and constantly stirring us (through his Holy Spirit) to turn away from religion and seek him. He who seeks the Lord, will find him!
It is obvious by now that in my view even within the Christian religion the truth (Jesus) has gone largely missing, and large numbers of people are practicing their religion rather then their faith (in Jesus). This is a terrible state of affairs. Other religions are even further from the truth, in my view, and are powerful systems that can easily be abused by people hungry for power. This is an even worse state of affairs.
I believe that the Muslim Religion (Islam) has the potential of becoming a power base which intents to dominate much of the world, and that Islam is well on it’s way to taking power even in Western Europe. A very nasty power-over movement this is.
This is a far cry from the Kingdom of Heaven which is all about power-under instead of power-over. Islam is ultimately a power-over system and not based on the love-of-God, as where the Christian faith, where expressed in truth is ALL ABOUT LOVE and power-under, which is serving.
It is very tempting for Christians and ‘the Christian church’ (as in the Christian political voice) to attempt to grab power (power-over), and try to organize the world according to their (political) views, how-ever limited those views may be. In the process (of trying to take political power) the love of God (faith expressing itself in love) is forgotten and the movement turns ugly. This is religion in it’s true ugly sense. We’ve seen this happen in the USA over the last so many years, and the results have been a disaster. The true Christian witness has suffered greatly and the world has not become a better place.
Following Jesus really means following him in the way he kept ministering to the poor and needy, not aiming for power-over, but always choosing power-under, even to the point of death. It’s the resurrection power that will change the world for the better; no other power can do that. Followers of Jesus have to stay focussed on this journey. Religion predictably does the opposite (with predictable results).
I grew up in the Christian religion and learned all about the Old Testament, not the New sadly. I eventually walked away from the this system of bondage, and found myself looking for a savior. When I met Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, I got born again, as they say. But even then there was the option of getting stuck in organized religion all over again. It is every where, you see. It even creeps into places that seem so free at first.
So, even after being touched by God’s wonderful spirit, I found myself gradually going to sleep (spiritually speaking) for lack of focus.
Compare this to falling asleep behind the wheel; it is extremely dangerous. By God’s grace I survived the crash, and knew from then on that the only way to stay on course is to follow Jesus. I now practice my faith in Jesus every hour of the day & night, and make sure I stay fully focussed on him. This has given me tremendous freedom; it has also put some serious and much needed restrictions on my life. How good all of this is!
So, to the question, ‘is religion good or bad?’ I should answer: it is not about it being good or bad, it is about how important Jesus is in a person’s life, in a group of friends or family, in a church, in a denomination, in a party, in a country; in the world.
Tags: faith, Holy Spirit, Jesus, joy, Kingdom of Heaven, religion
