Lately, there was a video that went viral among my friends of a young man voicing his opposition to Religion, sparking a debate between those who believe that Religion should be done away with and those who stand by Religion.
I am not a religionist, and here's why.
Now, as any good journalist, I am biased--as is everyone in the world--but I will state my bias here, and what I believe is my personal belief based on my experience and knowledge gleaned from experiences, friends, and books, and from my personal study of the Bible. Again, this is my personal belief, it does not reflect the views of anyone else but me.
Let me give a bit of background. Religion isn't bad per se, but as a human institution it is prone to many faults. Heck, even divine institutions are prone to faults when men pretend to take control over it, like marriage (or lack thereof in this country). Thanks to the defaming power of human opinion and control, many good things have lost their good meaning. Take the swastika, for example. For many tribes and cultures of the world, the swastika held different meanings, nearly almost always something positive, like "life." It is still used today in Hindu cultures to evoke "Shakti". Even so, one glance at a swastika and the first thing that comes to mind is images of Nazi military parades and a wild man with a funny mustache.
Words can also lose their once good meaning. "Gay" used to mean (and is still in the dictionary as) happy, merry. 1953 came around, though, and people gave it another meaning. Now saying that you are gay is almost always received with the wrong connotation.
I believe the same thing has happened to the word/institution of "Religion." The word we use today actually comes from a 13th century Latin word which means sanction, supernatural constraint, and tie back. For us, religion is "a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices." (Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary.)
To offset the video, my friends all chose to look at James 1:27, which states "A religion that is pure and stainless in the sight of God the Father is this: to take care of orphans and widows in their suffering, and to keep oneself unstained by the world" (ISV). The defenders of religion then stated, "See, religion is not evil. This is what religion is."
And they were right. Here's my point: for the Greek mindset and Hebrew connotation of James and the early church, religion had a completely different meaning than what we have today. The word James uses for "religion", threeskeia, comes up again in Colossians 2:18, except that here it means something completely different to our eyes: "Let no one who delights in humility and the worship of angels cheat you out of the prize by boasting about what he has seen. Such a person is puffed up without cause by his carnal mind" (ISV). Here, it means worship!
I believe that this is what I mean when I say I'm not a religionist. I do not believe in a system, mere protocol. This is what religion has come to mean now. Our understanding of religion comes from a word that means constraint, and that has been practiced over and over again by people, so changing what true religion (should I say worship?) is. What religion is now is a system of guilt, made so that we keep looking amongst ourselves and our pastors for knowledge, when God wants us to reason things, think things through.
Religion has told us to convert as many as possible, striking up Crusades against muslims, and decimating Native Tribes, shaking everything up in inner Africa as we hold up the banner of religion. That is NOT the gospel. We were meant to spread the gospel and make disciples who would turn into apostles and spread it even more. Sometimes we stay stuck as disciples, just taking everything taught to us and believing it. In this process, converting is not a step. "Baptizing them" usually throws people off--we must convert to baptize! But how are we to baptize someone who is more Christ-like than us? Maybe that person from a different religion is more Christ-like--they should baptize me. Spread the gospel. Not inject the gospel.
I am not a religionist. I believe that Jesus came to show us what true worship is. True worship is spreading the gospel. What is the gospel? Jesus spread it every time He went somewhere: He healed, He clothed, He fed, He soothed, He cried, He provided, for us to know how God looks like, who God really is. I cannot truly worship something or someone I don't know. I am not in this world to "Adventisize" it, I am here to be Jesus' hands and feet. True worship. Religion in its grassroots origin. With the freedom to think, to question. Not to be constrained, tied back by "it is written, and that's it. No thinking allowed."
Let us engage in true worship.
No comments:
Post a Comment