How To Let Go

-
     To grab on to God with both hands, one has to let go of religion.  I have been a Christian for more than 20 years.  And I think I can sum up the point of Jesus' ministry in a simple statement: "Let go of religion and hold on - with every fiber of your being - to God."  What makes me think this?  When Jesus came into this world, he came into a system of beliefs that had strayed far from the simple faith of Abraham.  It was a system of religious oppression headed by the Teachers of the Law: the Pharisees and Sadducees.  They required strict adherence to a set of laws as a requirement for men to commune with God.  There were strict rules of what sacrifices had to be made (doves, bulls etc) in restitution for sin in order to be right with God.  Jesus came and threw all of this out.  He upturned the money changers tables and sacrificial animal dealers that took up shop in the Temple.  He told people, including women, "Your sins are forgiven," shocking "the religious" of the time.  How? "Because," as he said to the prostitute,  "your faith has saved you. Now go in peace." (Luke 7:50) Faith in what?  In Jesus?  In God?  He didn't specify. So aren't we as Christians kind of missing the point by institutionalizing belief in Jesus?  Aren't we in danger of becoming the modern Pharisees?  That might be a scary thing to say, but think for a moment about Christianity today and for the past 2000 years.  Isn't there a tendency to say we have it right so everyone else is damned?  I am not saying all Christians have this view, but the belief is pervasive that we have belief in Jesus (something we have) and that will get us to heaven, and others do not, so they are going to hell.  This is the reason there are missionaries.  This is the reason there is proselytizing and bible tracts and apologetics.  On the best of days it is because we love others and want them to have what we have found.  But doesn't this betray our belief that what we have is faith that Jesus is the incarnate son of God and others are in error?  So we are judging that they don't have a relationship with God, and we, in love of course, think we must make them aware of that.
     When we judge others for not holding our beliefs, we ARE the Pharisees.  Especially when we try to impose those beliefs on others. And if we are doing that when Jesus returns (which I think he already has in every person that needs help, in every person we fed or clothed or "visited in prison"). he will tear down the walls of our churches and build them up again in three days. Because there is nothing new under the sun.  As long as man has had an experience of God he has created religion.  Religion is man's creation.  What is religion?  It is "a system of belief and worship." (- Dictionary.com)  I am sure of one thing: God doesn't respect man's systems.
     What does that leave us with?  What does that leave me with?  A desire for the simple faith of Abraham and Joshua and David, and the many people who wrote the Psalms. A desire for the simple faith of Jesus. It says, I don't know about any body else, but I am going to chase after God and hold on to him with both hands with all of my might. "As a deer thirsts for water, so my soul pants for God." (psalm 42)  I am going to skip church this Sunday morning and read the scriptures and listen to my "God" mix on the stereo and go sit under a tree in the sunshine and listen for God whispering. The only thing I think that is real and true is the desire to be in a relationship with God.  I think that takes as many forms as there are people with that desire. Some of these people adhere to one religious system or another for some or all of their lives. Others experience God outside the man-made borders of religion.  How can we say that they do not?  If we do, aren't we Pharisees?
     What if Jesus' ripping down of a system of religion was not because that one system was wrong, but because every system built up by man around God is antithetical to God?  What if God is bigger than the division between the different sects of Christianity, or the many different forms of man-made religion.  Those boundaries are drawn by man.  And the God I believe in, is a hell of a lot bigger than man's desires and definitions for him.  And the people I meet too don't fit into neat and tidy boxes. Why would they?  Aren't they made in God's image?
     I think that greatest love you can have for another person is to accept them as they are and not try to change them.  If that mean's Jane's worshiping of crystals isn't what I would do, does this mean Jane is any further from God than I am?  I can't judge Jane's heart.  God may actually be using colorful crystals to draw her close.  And because I follow the teachings of a 30 year old rabbi that was crucified, does that mean I am not panting after the same God as Ahmed down the street at the local Mosque? If he loves God then we are brothers.  And I think more importantly, "sons of God."  Just as Jesus was.
     Religion has always been a messy business.  It is messy because it draws lines and we don't live in a world of straight lines and boxes.  Nature doesn't work this way.  God made it that way.  It is man that must define and delineate what he sees around him. Not God.  That is what I get from Jesus's life.  That is one of the many reasons I love Jesus.  Because he loved people, not systems. I hope that some day before I die I will learn to love people like that.  Because, believe it or not, I think that is Heaven.  It is a place we commune with God, here and now or maybe after death too.  Not a system of man-made Religion.  We may or may not go anywhere when we die.  What matters is that we live in a life communing with God every chance we get. We are the "little ones" that come to Jesus because he shows us the way to God.  That, I believe is what Jesus wanted.  He didn't want us to get sidetracked worshiping him and building up a system of rules and regulations and delineating lines.  He wanted us to have the simple faith and love for God as well as others.  Just like he did.

Popular posts from this blog

A Letter To a Friend

-
Image
I woke up at 9:00 this morning, threw some clothes on and headed out the door.  I was meeting with the a ministry leader at 9:20 that morning because I had expressed an interest in joining their care ministry at my new church. Just before I left, I sent him a letter that I had written that week for a young man who I had visited in the adolescent psych unit at the hospital.  I thought it would give the ministry leader some insight into my interactions with my care receivers, as I had been a Stephen Minister for 5 years and a lay chaplain at my previous church. When I got there, I sat down with the ministry leader.  We got to talking and I asked him what he did for work previously.  He said he was a pharmacist.  Then he said something that perked my ears: He said his first rotation was for a Psychiatric Hospital in Ohio.  He said there was razor wire around the high wall surrounding it and double locked doors on every ward.  I asked him if it was for peo...
Read more of this post »

Hope

-
Image
What is the hope of the Christian message?  Is it like Plato’s followers and the Gnostics believed, that an elect are spiritual beings living in an irrelevant and corrupt world, just waiting to break these earthly bounds and obtain a purely enlightened spiritual existence?  Or conversely, is it that we are like rats trapped on a sinking ship, and there is nothing we can do save delude ourselves with a spiritual pie-in-the-sky way of thinking?  No, far from it.  Jewish thought believed that there was a day coming, when the heavenly kingdom would come down and the saved would be welcomed in, on a restored Earth, in a return to the Garden of Eden. And the early Christians found that they no longer needed to wait until the end of time and the final resurrection of all souls to see the beginnings of this. They were surprised and their world view shifted with the early resurrection of Jesus Christ: in history rather than at the end of it. And so he adopted us as sons and ...
Read more of this post »

Monkey Bars

-
Image
     I was talking with my wife's father, a retired pastor, and he told me about an image he used in many of his sermons throughout the years.  It is a thing that every kid learns on the monkey bars on the playground at school.  It is simply this: when you are on the monkey bars, you can't move forward until you let the hand behind you let go of the last bar.      In this way, I am kind of stuck in my life.  The trailing monkey bar is my smoking cigarettes.  I just haven't been able to let go of that bar no matter how hard I try.  I believe that this bar gives me a lift.  You see, I suffer from a chronic depression.  When I go outside and have a smoke and a caffeinated beverage, I get a little boost to my mood.  Often this gets me back on track and I start doing things besides laying in bed.  I might do the dishes and I feel better about what I have accomplished.  I might, being awake ...
Read more of this post »