Why I Am Not Religious

This morning, I tweeted that I was not religious, which appears to be contradictory to the rest of my tweets and blogs where I regularly mention God and the Bible. It is not my intention to speak against any particular church or denomination, but I just want to express my personal thoughts on religion and being religious.

The word ‘religious’ has a negative connotation for me. It conjures up pictures of people who are weighed down by obligations they must fulfil to appease some god or deity. The word itself comes from the Latin ‘religare’ which means ‘to bind fast’ in the sense of ‘place an obligation on’. Christianity has been included in the world religions which I find rather unfortunate as the Christ of Christianity was not religious himself. Religious Christianity abounds in our world today because there will always be a layer of society who love to ‘bind fast’, dictate, command, abuse, intimidate, dominate, exploit and quite simply do exactly the opposite of what Christ himself taught. Christ had absolutely no respect for the religious leaders of his day because he saw their hypocrisy and impure motives. He said of them:

…they do not practise what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. (Matthew 23: 3b-4)

He addresses them directly with scorching words:

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (Matthew 23:25-28)

No wonder they didn’t like him! Jesus gave offence where it was necessary because what he saw ignited righteous indignation and wrath in his soul. In light of this I ask myself what he sees as he looks into my heart. I have absolutely no desire to be one thing outwardly and to be something else inwardly. That is why religion serves me no purpose because it is just a dead set of rules and makes me even more frustrated that I cannot keep them. I can never appease God nor win his favour by my own efforts. Religion is dead – I need something else.

I definitely was not born a Christian. My parents thankfully did not baptize me as a child or call me a Christian. Going to church didn’t make me a Christian any more than going to MacDonalds made me a hamburger (in the words of Keith Green). No outward thing could make me a Christian because becoming a Christian essentially takes place in the heart (see Romans 10:10). I understood that Christ died on the cross for my sins so I could have a relationship with a holy, living God. Jesus cried, ‘It is finished!’ on the cross, which means I cannot add to it (Hebrews 7:26-28). God is satisfied with Christ’s sacrifice and offers forgiveness to those who repent. When I accepted Christ, his Spirit came into my heart and began to change me from within. From that moment, I embarked on a living relationship with God as opposed to following a set of dead rules. The spiritual part of me had come to life and I was now alive to God. I know it sounds a bit strange, but it is difficult to explain the spiritual with finite language. Romans chapter 8 expounds the doctrine of having the Spirit of Christ and the book as a whole unfolds the doctrine of salvation through faith alone.

Now that I have Christ’s Spirit, my desire is to learn more about what that means by reading the Bible. I am religious in this just as I am religious in having my breakfast, lunch and dinner. The authenticity of the Bible is debated of course, but personally I cannot perceive any motive as to why someone would fabricate the New Testament, in particular, since most of the writers were imprisoned and martyred in the end. Jesus knew he would die, so assuming the role of Messiah, if He was not the Messiah, did not do him any favours. There was no financial gain, no bestowal of celebrity status, nothing that would suggest an ulterior motive. That in itself does not lead me to accept the Bible, but I have already written a blog on its reliability elsewhere in this collection of musings.

Since I am not religious, I do not go to church to be a Christian. I go to church because I am a Christian. I reject ritual and tradition because they often contradict the doctrine of the Bible. Quite honestly, the idea of transubstantiation horrifies me. It is based on a complete misinterpretation of Jesus’ words in John 6. The bread and wine are only a SYMBOL of Christ’s body and blood to be partaken in memory of his death (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). If we confess to being a Christian, then let us at least know the teachings of the Bible and differentiate between Biblical doctrine and traditions of men. If we are merely carrying out traditions which are not contained in the Bible, maybe we could use our limited time better in fulfilling Christ’s law of love.

Why am I not religious? I have a RELATIONSHIP with the living God rather than a RELIGION. Religion can be forced upon you, but a relationship with God cannot. It has to be sought out and nurtured entirely of free will. Maybe some people will still call me religious at the end of this blog, but I hope I have made clear in a small measure the difference between religious Christianity and Biblical Christianity.