I hate religion.
There is nothing more destructive and dangerous to our world than religion and I want nothing to do with it. When people think I am religious, I cringe a little, vomit in my mouth, and plead that they give me another chance.
In spite of my detest for religion, I love religious people. I am not all that fond of the zealots that think God is telling them to kill doctors, strap on bombs, topple sky scrapers, turn the desert to glass, or invade sovereign nations, but I have empathy for them none the less.
They have been deceived.
Being a gullible chap by nature, I understand how one can lose oneself into religion. It can happen to the best intentioned soul and before you know it you have a well worn path of religious tradition in your life.
Religion is comforting.
God is a concept that is challenging to grasp even on a sober day and religion gives us something we can hold in our hands. Beads, crosses, prayer rugs, candles, Bibles, Korans, statues, rocks, guns, knives, legislation, all of it calls to us and gives us the sense that we are somehow in control.
I think at the heart of who we are is this insatiable need to touch the hand of our maker. Religion gives us something we can touch, it is a counterfeit, but if feels good none the less.
I am struggling with religion again.
I am not personally struggling with it, perhaps a better way to say it is that it is struggling against me, and it has taken out some of my friends.
The election seems to have polarized something in the church. I want to make a distinction between the church and religion because they are vastly different. The church, outside of its religious traditions, is a wonderful force for good on the earth. The problem is, most of the church has slipped into religion and as such has starting barring the doors and shoring up walls getting ready to defend all they believe.
I witnessed this type of behavior two Sundays in a row where I worship. I wish I knew how we move from trusting and promoting a God of love to trusting and promoting legislation to appease Him? Fearing His judgment and forcing those who do not know Him to change is baffling. To mandate law instead of offering a better way through love smacks of serving a god we can not hold, and are desperately trying to.
Instead of changing anything, we lash out at people whom by their very nature are unaware of what they do to assuage our own guilty conscience and realization that we have blood on our hands, because we know better.
They have been deceived, but we have been deceitful.
The apostle Paul writes about the law and how before the law we were blameless but now that the law has come we are guilty. He goes on to lament that the more he knows about the law the more he is convicted by it. The law is simply a standard. If you go through life never knowing the standard was there, you are ignorant of it and not guilty of breaking it intentionally, but you are still guilty of missing the standard.
I don’t want this to get too theological, but that impossible scenario – Not knowing the law and falling short of it through ignorance and now knowing the law but still falling short of it even more hopelessly – was the reason we needed a Savior.
I happen to think that if God went to all the trouble to murder his Son, and He was pleased to do it to set us free from the consequences of falling short, I think He can handle those who do not know Him yet. The most difficult questions He asks is for those who do know Him, but that is a for another post.
Hearing the declarations Sunday, loosely and appallingly veiled in scripture, I felt the familiar sting of religion slap my face. It starts with the self righteous assurance of standing on the “one truth” and before you know it walls start to close in and doors slam shut as people start grasping for handfuls of god. We shake our bloody fists of god at the world, at one another, at those who don’t look like us proclaiming his judgment on them. We plead and cry and rend our garments in vain attempts to relieve our conscience of the guilt we feel inside. We lash out at our brothers and sisters with our religion and proclamations and fear because their handful of God doesn’t look like our handful.
We divide.
We alienate.
We segregate.
We destroy the very thing that mattered all along, the thing worth living and dying for.
Unity.
God forgive us.