Mmmm, Religion. Outside of politics, probably everyone’s favorite topic at the dinner table during Christmas or Thanksgiving. Who doesn’t enjoy a lovely topic to get everyone’s blood pressure to a lovely boil? Well, despite the lightening rod that the topic of religion can be, I’ve got it on my heart right now to share some things God’s been showing me as of late.
I’m not a fan of religion. I wasn’t always that way though. Years ago I was definitely the type of person who would bristle at any comment about religion being the source of the world’s problems. (Sidenote, I don’t believe it is a source of all problems, but definitely more than I ever would have admitted to then.) A few years wiser and my views on religion have shifted. Especially experiencing firsthand the weaknesses and faults of religion. The change of heart has been a process, but it’s so good.
So why is religion a potential problem? It has problems inherently because it is something that is manmade. It is our best attempt to connect with God or in some cases, millions of gods. Because of that, it has faults, it has weaknesses, and it has flaws. All of that said, I believe in the importance of community that it can create. I believe in the importance of being plugged into a church, the Body of Christ. But so many times I think that with religion, those who focus on just that get caught up in the legalism of things instead of making sure that we have the relationship with God that He’s always desired with us. In my first 3 months on the race, the flaws of religion have become even more evident, especially here in Eastern Europe.
In a previous blog I alluded to the Orthodox Church presence in this part of Europe, and that our contacts received a lot of resistance towards their efforts to reach out to their community from the Orthodox Church. Some of the problems they faced seemed pretty crazy, but then on my final day of ministry in Romania, we experienced it firsthand. We traveled to a small village outside of Draganesti with no evangelical church presence. Our goal for the day? Just talk with people, pray with people, give them some information, and invite any youth we see to the middle of town for a fun program we would be having filled with games, songs, and some teachings. Things were going well and I was in the van with our main contact when a man flagged down our van. Turns out he was the town priest and he was less than happy to have us there. So much so that he contacted the police to have us kicked out. We left him behind to continue on to the children’s program, already in full swing when we arrived. A short while later, our friend showed up dressed up in his priest garb and the police were not far behind. Long story short, we got kicked out of town and our contact Raul will likely receive a fine.
This priest is exhibit A of problems with religion. The Orthodox Church uses the same Bible we all use. They preach out of that Bible, and they will all say they are Christians. But here’s the thing, they totally miss the main point, and that’s the relationship with God. We should be able to go to them and say “Hey, let’s work together to reach out to this community.” Instead, what we have are modern day Pharisees, similar to the people who harassed Jesus all of the times about His teachings. These priests are more interested in retaining the political power that they have. This is their money maker. In a meeting with our main contact in Moldova, he mentioned that he was working with some medical missionaries who went to a lady’s house to help her with her health. As they finished up, they offered to pray and she turned them down because she had no money to pay for prayer. I don’t know about you, but that breaks my heart, because apparently prayer is only free when it’s in the actual church building. If you want it outside of church, it’s coming out of your pocket.
This sort of thing is just one of a number of problems with religion I think. Religion would rather be legalistic instead of relational. Religion would rather be judgmental instead of realizing that we’ve all got our faults and we are no more righteous than the next person. This is just one of a number of things I’ve been noticing lately. For the sake of time and space though, I want to wrap this up. What’s more important to you? Is it following what a manmade religion tells you what you should do to be “right” with God? Is it all based on rules regarding things that are more than likely trivial? Or is the actual relationship with God more important? Where you can live a life walking in freedom in Christ because of what His physical death did for every person on this planet. Free from your past. Free from the power that sin would otherwise hold over you. Free to not be bound by a bunch of legalism that hurts relationships and the ability to reach out to others, and instead meeting people where they are at and not where they should be. God wants the personal relationship. That’s what it’s always been about.
