Christianity is not a Religion

|

Neither the law of Moses, nor the life of Christ, were ever intended to be religions.

Now, I would imagine after reading that statement you probably had one – or both – of the following reactions:

“That’s a bold statement, bro…” or
“Yeah…not quite sure where dude’s going with this…”

Before you check-out, allow me to explain.

To start, we first must define religion. Broadly speaking, the practical definition of religion that I’ll be using is “a system wherein adhering to a particular set of beliefs, rules, and ritual practices will result in acceptance by and the reward of a deity or deities.” Said plainly: “If you believe the right things and do the right things, then a god or gods, will be pleased with you and reward you in this life or the next.”

When you distill it down, this broad definition is the foundation of pretty much every world religion (the popular application of Christianity included). But I would like to take the opportunity to explore with you if this should be the case.

To do this I will explore an aspect of God’s created order: parenting.

The goal of parenting

A good parent gives their child rules, boundaries, guidelines and expectations for living in their household. And why does a parent place these things on their child? The answer is: to train them and prepare them for life. A parent places these things on their child in order to give them what they need to understand the world they inhabit, which in turn helps prepare them to live a healthy, mature, and productive adult life.

In order to develop into a healthy adult, a child needs the following:

• To understand that the world doesn’t revolve around them.
• To learn how to operate under the rule and authority of someone above them – because they will always be under the rule of someone or something.
• To learn that there is such a thing as right and wrong.
• To learn that they need to be concerned about others and not just themselves.
• To learn how to work hard, be responsible, and be accountable.
• To know that there are consequences for their actions.
• To understand that while they will have an abundance of freedom in this world, if they don’t operate wisely and responsibly within those freedoms, they will only end up harming themselves.

A good parent knows that if their child doesn’t learn these truths early, that life will teach them hard lessons down the road. And if their child grows up to be a self-absorbed, lazy, irresponsible adult, they will not only be a danger to themselves but to everyone around them, as well. It’s for these reasons parents give their children curfews and chores, why they teach them to be kind to others, to work hard in school, and to respect people in authority. This preparation effort, therefore, is not just a benefit to the child, but but by extension, it’s an aid to their surrounding community, as well.

With all that in mind, it’s of equal importance to also acknowledge the reasons why a good parent doesn’t give their child rules, boundaries, and expectations. The following are reasons a good parent doesn’t place these things on their child:

• To provide a way for their child to earn their love, acceptance, affection, and provision.
• To make themselves look good in other peoples’ eyes, being that their child is so obedient.
• To make themselves feel powerful because of the control they hold over their child.

To summarize:

A good parent gives their child rules and expectations in order to train them and prepare them; And a poor parent gives their child rules and expectations as a means for their child to earn their affection, favor, and earn things.

Now, keeping these things firmly in mind let’s apply this proper understanding of parental purpose to the ultimate Parent and see what truth it reveals. And to do this we’re going to take some steps through our story as seen in scripture.

Our story

Let’s start in the garden – the place where our story begins and where everything was as God desired it.

If we believe that a system of do/don’t, favor-earning religion is at the center of God’s heart for us then it would make sense that we would see it on display in the garden. But we don’t. As a matter of fact, the garden lacks anything remotely resembling our definition of religion. There are no temples for worshiping, no regularly scheduled mandatory meetings, no pre-orchestrated services, no qualified professionals needed to mediate for or to educate the people, and no rituals to be adhered to in order to appease God and win His favor.

When we look at scripture simply for what it says, what it shows us is this: God created humanity for rule, not religion.

“Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

Genesis 1: 26 (NIV); emphasis mine

You see, before God ever created humans He stated His intentions for them. And He had in mind for them to rule over creation with Him, not be burdened with a host of things to do in order to avoid His punishment or earn His praise.

As humans walked with God in the garden, they learned Him – they didn’t just learn about Him, they learned Him. They learned His personality, His temperament, and His voice. But equally important, they loved Him. Their learning and their loving went hand-in-hand, each fueling the other. Humans spent every conscious moment exploring, enjoying, and worshiping God in His new creation; all as a part of their calling to actively partner with Him in cultivating the earth and ruling over it.

To put it simply: In the beginning there was no religion, because everyone was too busy being in love.

Until man sinned. But what I find interesting is that even when man sinned, God didn’t drop the hammer of religious law on them. Instead, He simply explained to everyone involved their new reality based on their transgression.

Me paraphrasing:

“Serpent, you first: You’re cursed to crawl in the dust for the rest of your days. And there will be division between your descendants and that of mankind, you will deal a blow to man but he will utterly destroy you.”

“Next, woman: Giving birth will now be excruciatingly painful for you and because you ate first you will now be under the authority of your husband.”

“And Adam: Before, you didn’t have to truly work, the land simply produced bountifully for you everything you needed. No more. Now you will need to work hard for everything you get from the earth. You wanted to know what it’s like to be like Me? You got it. Now you have to make the land produce. Oh, and when you die, you’ll return to the dust from which you came.”

Then God kicked them out of the garden, rendering the Tree of Life off-limits.

Fast forward a bit and Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel. Here we get the first picture of offerings being made to God. (Which is interesting – we don’t get any indication of how they came to be instructed of this practice, how and why to do it. Presumably God gave them direct instruction because He was still close to them.) And at some point, Cain presented an offering that was not pleasing to God, while his brother Abel presented one that God was pleased with. This drove Cain to become jealous and eventually murder his brother.

I find it interesting though, that again God did not levy a collection of written laws and rules on man. He again simply declared to the offending party the consequences of their actions and stated how their reality would now be different than it was before.

God tells Cain (who is a man of the soil) that the ground will no longer yield crops for him. And Cain responds by saying “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from Your presence.”

What seems clear here, is that even though everyone had been removed from the Tree of Life in the garden, they were still close to God.

Moving forward in time again, the human population grows and becomes wicked, to the point where God expresses regret that He ever created man. But even still, he doesn’t levy written law and religion on the people so that they can work toward HIm. Instead He starts over with a new people through Noah. And, eventually, He does so again through Abraham and his descendants.

Keep moving forward…Abraham’s descendants (the Israelites) are enslaved in Egypt for around 400 years, then rescued from their oppressors by God and brought into the wilderness on the way to the land that He’d promised them.

It’s while traveling in this wilderness that God enters a covenant relationship with His people and He begins to provide them with His written law via Moses. So, why is it that God took some several thousand years to finally give man written law, as well as all the “religious” observations and practices that came with it?

Because the written rules, guidelines, boundaries, and expectations that God handed down to the Israelite people were not God’s original intent – relationship was.

The picture

Here’s the picture that I believe our story’s painting that we often miss.

In the beginning God was in ever-present communion with man, He made His dwelling with us. He walked with us in the cool of the garden and He talked with us as both a father and a friend. We not only had intimacy with God, but proximity as well. What the story shows us is that as time marches on our actions drove an increasingly large wedge between ourselves and God. And with every selfish and fearful choice, our intimacy and proximity with God disintegrated – His voice that we once knew so well grew more and more foreign every day.

And while God did still speak directly with certain faithful individuals (we see regular, active communication with people like Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, to name just a few) God no longer had the intimacy that He desired with all of His people. Whereas He once personally and directly communicated truths about Himself and His world to us, we had put so much distance between us and Him that He had to communicate to us and attempt to lead us to maturity through different means.

Whereas God desired face-to-face relationship, because of our rejection, He had been relegated to writing us letters. Rather than teaching His people Himself, He had to send us the law as our teacher.

“But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore, the law was the tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.”

Galatians 3: 23-25 (NASB); emphasis mine

While God was content to write to His people to teach us for a time – praise be to Him that He wouldn’t allow such great distance to be between Himself and His people forever! He had always planned to have us be with Him again as close children and friends.

And He did exactly that in Jesus. For it is by Jesus, not the advancement of human religious effort, that the Father would again be reunited with His people.

The law that God handed down for the purpose of showing us His heart and providing an understanding of how His world functions when He is fully in control, we took and turned it into a system of working to earn His favor – completely missing Him in the process.

But Jesus blew up all that religious nonsense quickly, thoroughly, and consistently.

Look at the speech we call “The Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5. He tells us that no matter how good we may be at upholding religious rituals and keeping clean on the outside, everyone will transgress God internally in some way or another. At some point, every one of us will hate our neighbor or lust after someone or be envious of someone else. Jesus’ message is that our transgression is inevitable because it comes from something within us that we cannot fully overcome on our own. So putting a burden on ourselves to uphold true righteousness is foolishness, because it’s impossible by our own effort.

He’s saying: “You can’t do it. At all. But there’s good news! You don’t have to try any longer! I can do it through you! If you let me.”

It’s the need for our own effort that Jesus was freeing us from. Where God’s people had introduced religion, God, through Jesus, re-introduced relationship with Life Himself!

Praise God!

The Good News

The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and David is not the God of religion, but the God of relationship and pure, unadulterated freedom and life!

Brothers and sisters don’t be fooled by the adversary’s old tactics and temptations. His influence is in full effect today in the world and the church has proven that it’s not immune. Because at this point, religion is baked into our Christian identity. We talk about salvation being a gift that we can’t earn, but then in the same breath we talk about how we then must keep a correct set of rules and practices in order to “maintain” said salvation.

And right back to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil we go.

How can you maintain something that you could never attain on your own to begin with? You can’t – not on your own. It’s a trap.

Our fallen nature will always try to fall back into a pattern of relying on self to make our way to God and be like him (hence our eatin’ that tempting fruit in the first place). But God’s been trying to tell us since forever that we cannot make it to Him, nor can we by our own effort be like Him. All we can do is allow ourselves to be filled with Him. Because He is righteousness, He is truth.

And the only way to be filled with Him is to eat of the fruit from that “other” tree – The Tree of Life.

For we are not made righteous by perfect adherence to Sunday worship rituals or theological traditions, or by avoiding certain external actions, or by worshiping in a building with the “correct” name on it.

It is my hope that you will consider what God wants for us, His people. If you’ve been pulled into the trap of religious striving, ask God to reveal Himself and the freedom of the life that He offers. He has so much in store for His people, let’s repent of all our striving and simply love and pursue Him together so that He can truly reign in and through all of His people again!

My friends, God bids us back to the life of the garden…a life where everyone was too busy being in love to worry about trying to earn it.

-Alex