Christianity 1–0 Religion
Religion is simply a belief or faith in a superhuman power. For instance you could attribute your successes and life achievements to a palm tree. Now, I’m not sure there’s a word for belief in trees as gods but I’m sure you get the gist lol.
In James 1 vs 26–27, Our fellow Jesus fan boy and Apostle defined what true religion really is.
“Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this; to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted in the world”
The bible literally has a whole verse speaking on what true religion is, pure, undefiled. Verse 26 really does it for me and it’s actually pretty funny because it goes to show that we can claim to be doing the right thing but before God we really are deceiving ourselves.
These verses do not state that religion is bad , all it says is that the way we humans practice it may be bad. As Christians or believers that are now privileged to have not only heard the gospel but have received sound doctrine, we have become self righteous. If we agree that the bible is the truth, that would mean that the book of James is also true, No? In a bid to spread across the good news we received, we now condemn the word “religion”, making it a negative word that represents every single area that Christianity has been lacking over the years.
“What we used to practice here is wrong, its religion, not Christianity”
“I’m tired of religion, I crave a deeper intimacy with God.”
Now I know no one asked me and hey? I may be wrong. I’m just saying that these kinds of statements seem to be rooted knee deep into our unwillingness to take responsibility. I see that we have refused to acknowledge that we never even knew God’s proper plan for religion and the definition thereof. We have refused to accept that we got the idea of religion wrong despite it being spelt out to us in our bibles. We then replace the word religion with faith, belief, intimacy with God etc. Now this is not a problem in itself , the problem is when we paint religion as this performative, grandiose mindless worship, presenting it as something to be frowned upon.
When we do this , I think quite frankly, we look ridiculous and portray that we lack comprehension skills lol not only amongst ourselves but even to people that are unsaved because it really makes no sense that we play a game of semantics every time we feel a certain generation is losing certain key aspects of its Christ-like identity.
Saying Christianity or a belief in God is not religion is like saying 1 + 1 does not equal 2 . As Christians, rather than realizing we don’ t understand the reason why 1 + 1 = 2 or the formula used to arrive at the answer , we negate it entirely. Constantly talking about how religion is fake and unnecessary is extremely false and misleading.
Whatever it is we call it, faith, intimacy, love for God, Christianity; Whatever we use to replace the world religion can be all so easily corrupted and given new meaning if we do not take responsibility, fix up and fill those gaps we presume to be lacking. In the next few years, we can start calling ourselves, people of Zion lol because the word “believers” has been polluted by our ignorance and lack of understanding of scripture. Trying to churn words doesn’t makes us any better.
Don’t get me wrong, I am pro- intimacy with God. Our Christian walk is more than just routine prayers, church planting, evangelism, philanthropy. It’s all of it and a personal relationship with God.
If you need more clarification on this, please check out the sermon “Intimacy not performance” from This Green Church on Youtube.
Thank you for reading, See you next week❤️
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