Why I'm not a Religionist, III

Many things just clicked in my mind.

Religion, as it is practiced today, is very egocentric.

We are always told to be perfect, to search ourselves for any sins I might hide away, witness to others and in effect, earn our way to heaven. Except we're told heaven can't be earned, just accepted.

Now, I'm not leaning towards Calvinism which states that, since Jesus forgave us all, it doesn't matter how I live down here because heaven is mine already. However, it seems to me that what we are told to do and how heaven fits into picture doesn't quite add up. No matter how preachers rephrase it, they all ask us to not sin again, effectively earning God's good graces--but heaven isn't earned. That does not make any sense at all.

In searching myself, going as a missionary somewhere way out of my comfort zone and baptizing, teaching, and what not all seems as items on a checklist of sorts. Let me give you an example.

At my workplace this summer, a group came in after three weeks in an exotic land leading an evangelistic series.The leaders of the group informed us of the goals they had set themselves and then told a couple of personal stories. Most of the people on the group were teenagers, leaving behind the comfort of the first world and headed towards what seemed to them the eight millionth world--but ended up being the first world anyway. Just because it was a third world country didn't take away from the fact that the city they went to was highly civilized, but that's beside the point.

They were there to help the church meet its goal of 1000 baptisms in the first semester of the year. They were behind, but there went the pimply teens to help save the day. And indeed, thanks to those pimply teens, many people were baptized and the goal was met. But what struck me wasn't their "success" rate, rather what they deemed a "success."

The leaders, a man with a Franciscan spot on his head and a woman with a strange adherence to her 50s hairdo, took turns interrupting each other as they told the story as vividly as they could. Then, they got to the point where they told the story of a boy who went through a low spot in his week preaching. According to them, the poor boy did not participate in social activities as energized as the rest of them. He went to his room early for bed. Then, the man said something amazing and awful all at the same time: the source of the boy's low mood was a lack of people who stood up or came to the stage when he made a calling. His mood only lifted when he finally got people to answer those callings.

What's wrong with that, you may ask? Simple. His gauge for success was a number. His goal there, like the goal set by their hosts, was to baptize a certain number of people, to add to their tally. If it is not met, that is a failure.

Again, I'm not trying to say that baptizing is wrong, but what I'm saying is that how many we baptize should never be our main goal. This leads to selfishness. I'm not baptizing primarily to save lives, but to fulfill our homework assignment.

When we do fail, especially repeatedly, we hate it.

We're told we need to keep a certain day, abstain from this, do the other thing perfectly, collect souls, but we forget that  the only thing God has explicitly asked of us repeatedly is to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with Him, as told in Micah 6:8.

I heard the story of two young people who have almost given up on religion because they feel unworthy. They have admitted that they would accept God's decision to leave them behind if and when he came to take us to heaven with no problems. Why is that? They have failed according to the modern religious standards.

They have sinned the same sin over and over and over again and apparently God has not saved them. Church only exacerbates things when someone boasts humbly of their achievements. Money has not come when they need it, even if a single tithe has not gone unpaid in years. What is missing?

Let's go back to the real religion, in James 1:27. What does it say? To me, its the pinnacle of unselfishness.

I suffer from a mild case of insomnia sometimes, and once I asked my dad (he gets these too) how to deal with them. He told me, "start praying for everyone on your prayer list." I was astonished. Not to mention amazed at how well it worked--not that praying for others is boring and makes you go to sleep, but the fact that I'm no longer focusing on my problems but on others' needs gives me peace because I see that my problems are in fact puny.

All this is liberating. All of a sudden, there is no checklist. I do things because I love doing the right thing and helping others. I no longer count the people who I've baptized/converted, but make sure all those who I might have contact with might have come away with something they didn't before, and it doesn't have to be a religion they didn't have before. Maybe, just maybe, that person is the one who baptizes me.

Seems fitting that I'm listening to "Be Set Free" by Josh Garrels right now.
http://joshgarrels.bandcamp.com/track/be-set-free