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Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
-Blaise Pascal

 
 

Last week, during our debrief in Thailand, I had a particularly rare and indulgent opportunity to spend time with Anthony, my former teammate and beloved brother, who was placed on another team back in November. Up until this month, our team hasn’t had the chance to work alongside his, and so the lunch date we set was something I was looking forward to with particular eagerness, since any amount of time spent with him always seems to stir my passions for Jesus and fire for the Gospel in a distinctively powerful way.

 
 

One thing I love about being around Anthony is that I never have to waste time with formalities. He’s known me through the grittiest and messiest moments of my Race, and even if months pass without getting to see him, picking up with him is never awkward. He truly is my brother in the deepest sense of the word. And, in keeping with this relationship, we had barely sat down when we began to dig into the deep things God had been teaching both of us since we last spent time together.

On this particular day, it was incredible to me the obvious depths by which Anthony was being used by God to speak directly to me. He said something extremely profound to me. Whatever the reason, I found myself agreeing with him in a deeper way than I could visibly express.

He said,

“The one thing I’m learning so much this year is that when Jesus died, he tore the veil that hid God from men. In America, however, we’ve put up an entirely new veil… And that veil is religion.”

This is one of the biggest lessons I’m learning this year.

It is turning all I ever thought I knew on it’s ear.

It is showing me that, for so many years and so many ways, I was the same hypocrite I accused others of being.

In living this life that I have plunged into for the past nine months, I have come to find that in the life I lived back home, while all my practices weren’t completely wrong, I did things that were detestable to God.

Yes, detestable. I was living my life in an anti-Christ state, and I wasn’t even aware of it. In fact, I thought that I was living a Christ-centered life in the middle of an anti-Christ state.

Is what I’m saying scaring you? Just wait…

There was a friend back home with whom I was very close. I watched this person make some poor life choices and jump into scenes that I knew were not good for her. Because of my “love” for her, I became angry and indignant at what she was doing, knowing she was setting her life up for a catastrophic fall later on. Because I was so angry and disappointed in her for the party scene she was jumping into, for the drinking and hooking up with random people she didn’t even know, I let her have it every time we talked. I jumped down her throat. I guilted her. I let her know how ashamed I was of her actions. I never gave her a break, even when she’d ask me to please stop raking her over the coals. I didn’t give up because I was determined I wasn’t going to let her go down a road she regretted. I was set that she was going to be so convicted of her failings that she would see her follies and return back to God.

And you know what? I was more guilty of sin than she was.

Read the Gospels. Point out to me how many times Jesus rebukes drunkards, prostitutes, cheaters, liars, and thieves, then compare that to how many times he rebukes the “holy” men who people look to as a representation of Godly living. I’ve been reading the Gospels through, and unless I am mistaken, Jesus NEVER rebukes the “sinners”. He opens His arms to their needs, knowing that they are downtrodden enough by the consequences of their sins. They are ostracized enough without Him ostracizing them, too.

What does Jesus do for these lowly sinners?

 
He saves a prostitute’s life when the law — or rather,”religion” — would have justified her being brutally beaten to death.

And what does he say to the “religious” in that moment, as they are cocking their arms for an MLB throw?

“Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.”

These people felt they were justified in stoning this woman to death because the law had set up the execution of adulterers as justice. But in that same arena, people who observed the law could not approach God directly because of the veil that separated the holy of holies from mankind. When Jesus died, that veil was ripped. This means that there is a new way to live, and that the law is no longer something we must observe, because we have received mercy where there once was only justice.

I felt justified in stoning my friend to death. Why? Because I had been following a God behind the veil.

This God was pleased with me for my righteous actions, He was proud of me for keeping His commandments, He was thrilled that I was using all my Bible-knowledge to convict my friend back onto the path of righteousness.

Yes, I was following an idea of God… But that God wasn’t Jesus.

Jesus is the God who stands before all those stone-throwers like me, wraps His arms around the quivering, sobbing “sinner” and says,
“I dare you to throw the first stone.”

 

He’s not glorified when I guilt and nitpick at others for unrighteous behavior. In fact, His nature is the absolute opposite of what I represented Him to be. How can I say I am a follower of Jesus when my behavior displays the exact opposite of what the Bible clearly represents His behavior to be? It’s like claiming veganism and then ordering a raw cow for dinner.

Do you see how contrary this kind of religion is to actually following Jesus?

 
But isn’t it amazing how churches all around justify this behavior? I’ve known girls in youth groups that slept with a new guy every weekend and got laughed out of church, and nobody stopped it. Nobody even thought it was the spirit of anti-Christ, aiding the guilty in feeling even more guilty. I’ve known church members who spread tales, either exagerated or truthful, about other members while they sat silently and watched the judgement fly. And we don’t even feel a lick of guilt when they don’t show up the next Sunday… or the next month of Sundays. Who wants hypocrites in the church?

 

Well, I daresay if we cleared the church of hypocrites, those who mock the downtrodden out of God’s arms and who perpetuate rumors to keep the needy from His love would be the ones to go, and I believe Jesus Himself would wrap His arms around the prostitutes, liars, rapists, and murderers, transform them with who He is, and then build the TRUE church of the redeemed up from the dust of the ground, these sinners shown mercy moving as the grand catalyst for revival that thunders and quakes and reaches the ends of the earth.

Do you see? Those two men that went down to the temple for prayer, and the first one thanks God that he is not like the filthy sinner on the floor, beating his chest and screaming for forgiveness? Remember that story?

Friends, I’VE been that Pharisee. Every single time I called my friend up on the phone and in the name of God demeaned her, guilted her, and shoved her face in the mud, I was that very Pharisee. Tell me where in the Gospel does Jesus ever win a following of sinners because he beats them in the ground with religion? I beat my friend in the ground with religion.

I did because of my veil. My pride and judgement hid from me the very face of God.

 
 
I read a haunting work by C.S. Lewis a few months back, and the words he said have come back to me over and over again. He is talking about where the center of all Christian morality lies. What he says surprised me at first, but as I’ve thought on it, I find that this rings truer and truer the more I read my Bible and the more I become aware of the nature of God in Christ.

 
 
 
You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind, Does this seem to you exaggerated? If so, think it over…

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that -and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison – you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see
something that is above you…

That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound’s worth of Pride towards their fellow-men. I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world that He had never known them. And any of us may at any moment be in this death-trap. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good – above all, that we are better than someone else – I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.”

This is a little scary, isn’t it? Hits way too close to home for me!

But thanks be to God, He has had patience with me in my pride because He loves me so. He wouldn’t let me continue on in my error, because He knew that, deep in my heart, I truly did desire to follow Him, no matter what. And He has shown me my errors and has convicted me of trespasses. I gave up judging others this year, and the result of that God-breathed decision has been the most beautiful release I could have imagined. Because in giving up my pride, shouldering humility, and looking through the eyes of Christ to see every fallen sinner as the very same as ME, I have seen the face of God, because without pride, without “religion”, there is no more need for a veil.

There needs to be accountability in the body of Christ, don’t get me wrong. But in the system I’ve grown up in, it is so easy to confuse keeping someone accountable with becoming puffed up in our own accomplishments. This is so because our idea of “religion” has been to pass judgement on someone and guilt them to God. One thing I have learned is that God is NEVER the author of guilt.

Do you hear me?

If you ever feel guilt in your heart, you can chalk that one up to Satan. Even if you feel guilty about sin you’ve committed, it is Satan trying to put up a wall between you and your Creator, because He has perfect forgiveness and alleviation of all guilt waiting upon you. No, God convicts us, but He never guilts us. This is another lie of “religion”.

Friend, even if we have been guilty of pride, of thinking ourselves holier than someone else, of ripping apart the poor and needy just to justify our own brand of holiness, there is forgiveness. If pride is the anti-God state, isn’t it amazing that He waited patiently on me, one who esteemed herself a sold-out follower, and instead of hurling damnation on my head, lovingly showed me a better way? God is rarely about lightning bolts and judgements, and He is always about love, because He is love.

If you feel particularly convicted about pride, about this thing called “religion”, or you just want to see what God’s face looks like from behind the veil you never even knew existed until now, why don’t you ask Him to help you? This year, whenever I met someone who needed to know if God was truly there, my instructions to them were always the same: Ask Jesus to show you Himself, and He truly, truly will.

Beloved, ask Jesus to show you Himself, and He truly, truly will.