Pure and Genuine Religion
If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless. Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. (James 1:26-27)
"Tell me again - why we go to church," my husband pined as we drove home from service.
"We go for others," I replied. "It doesn't seem like we go for ourselves anymore. We go so you can encourage [our friends]. We go so I can listen to [a single mom] share about her struggles with her son."
"I know..." he responded, "I want [our friends] to know there is someone who understands all the political crap they are going through. If it wasn't for that, I'd stay home and study my Strong's Concordance."
I am becoming more and more disillusioned with organized religion. Frustration bubbles to the surface when our rituals become mindless motions of piety for the sake of tradition while people in real need walk away in discouragement. My heart breaks when I hear the stories of a single mom who spend most of the first five years of her child's life the pediatric ward. "I had no friends during that time. People gave up on me because I spent hours at the hospital." Why do we let things like this happen?
Keep in mind that this is not just a problem in Christianity. I believe that all religions suffer from this self-serving pattern. We are guilty of feeding our own egos at the expense of others. Then we engage in some ritual to appease our conscience. We forget the point. We do not change. Alas, the world stays the same.
Camilla Gibb echoes the same sentiments through her fictional character Lilly in the book Sweetness in the Belly. Lilly, a white Muslim, recounts her feelings after Ramadan, a month long fast during daylight hours for the purpose of learning patience, sacrifice, and humility:
We're suffering for the Muslim version of a hangover, complete with a slight feeling of sadness and regret: one that comes from realizing that for all our disciplined reflection throughout the month, there has been no permanent shift in consciousness, no profound alternation of ourselves or the world around us. (pg. 159)
Is it possible to experience a religionless Christianity? Is it reasonable to believe that we can escape the institutionalized system of beliefs, attitudes, and practices defined by our denominations and embrace the true essence of James' admonition (i.e. caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you)?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked similar questions in his letters to Eberhard Bethage, April, 1944:
The questions to be answered would surely be: What do a church, a community, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religionless world? How do we speak of God--without religion, i.e., without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, inwardness, and so on? How do we speak (or perhaps we cannot now even "speak" as we used to) in a "secular" way about God? In what way are we "religionless-secular" Christians, in what way are we those who are called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favored, but rather as belonging wholly to the world? In that case Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, really the Lord of the world. But what does that mean? What is the place of worship and prayer in a religionless situation?
Admittedly, these questions scare me. I am a traditionalist at heart. Worship and prayer give me comfort. My husband, on the other hand, is quite willing to "experiment" for the sake of wisdom (a quality I admire in him). For instance, after a difficult experience as a youth pastor, he turned his back on prayer, devotions, tithing, and congregational worship for a season. He wanted to see what would happen. Would God and all His infinite blessings vanish? Would God stop pursuing him? On the contrary, no. My husband discovered a God he never knew: a God who spoke to him through his Chemistry and Calculus textbooks, a God who designed a world with such intricate beauty and wonder.
Thus, I dare to ask the question: Are we willing to experiment in our quest for pure and genuine religion? What "ritual" are we willing to give up so we are liberated to truly follow Christ's command to love God and love others? If so, what would we discover? If not, what are we afraid of?
In the meanwhile, my husband and I will keep going to church for the sake of others. And don't panic. While I am experiencing disillusionment with the religiosity of Christianity, my faith in the character, deity, and mission of Christ still stands, unwavering.
"Tell me again - why we go to church," my husband pined as we drove home from service.
"We go for others," I replied. "It doesn't seem like we go for ourselves anymore. We go so you can encourage [our friends]. We go so I can listen to [a single mom] share about her struggles with her son."
"I know..." he responded, "I want [our friends] to know there is someone who understands all the political crap they are going through. If it wasn't for that, I'd stay home and study my Strong's Concordance."
I am becoming more and more disillusioned with organized religion. Frustration bubbles to the surface when our rituals become mindless motions of piety for the sake of tradition while people in real need walk away in discouragement. My heart breaks when I hear the stories of a single mom who spend most of the first five years of her child's life the pediatric ward. "I had no friends during that time. People gave up on me because I spent hours at the hospital." Why do we let things like this happen?
Keep in mind that this is not just a problem in Christianity. I believe that all religions suffer from this self-serving pattern. We are guilty of feeding our own egos at the expense of others. Then we engage in some ritual to appease our conscience. We forget the point. We do not change. Alas, the world stays the same.
Camilla Gibb echoes the same sentiments through her fictional character Lilly in the book Sweetness in the Belly. Lilly, a white Muslim, recounts her feelings after Ramadan, a month long fast during daylight hours for the purpose of learning patience, sacrifice, and humility:
We're suffering for the Muslim version of a hangover, complete with a slight feeling of sadness and regret: one that comes from realizing that for all our disciplined reflection throughout the month, there has been no permanent shift in consciousness, no profound alternation of ourselves or the world around us. (pg. 159)
Is it possible to experience a religionless Christianity? Is it reasonable to believe that we can escape the institutionalized system of beliefs, attitudes, and practices defined by our denominations and embrace the true essence of James' admonition (i.e. caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you)?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked similar questions in his letters to Eberhard Bethage, April, 1944:
The questions to be answered would surely be: What do a church, a community, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religionless world? How do we speak of God--without religion, i.e., without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, inwardness, and so on? How do we speak (or perhaps we cannot now even "speak" as we used to) in a "secular" way about God? In what way are we "religionless-secular" Christians, in what way are we those who are called forth, not regarding ourselves from a religious point of view as specially favored, but rather as belonging wholly to the world? In that case Christ is no longer an object of religion, but something quite different, really the Lord of the world. But what does that mean? What is the place of worship and prayer in a religionless situation?
Admittedly, these questions scare me. I am a traditionalist at heart. Worship and prayer give me comfort. My husband, on the other hand, is quite willing to "experiment" for the sake of wisdom (a quality I admire in him). For instance, after a difficult experience as a youth pastor, he turned his back on prayer, devotions, tithing, and congregational worship for a season. He wanted to see what would happen. Would God and all His infinite blessings vanish? Would God stop pursuing him? On the contrary, no. My husband discovered a God he never knew: a God who spoke to him through his Chemistry and Calculus textbooks, a God who designed a world with such intricate beauty and wonder.
Thus, I dare to ask the question: Are we willing to experiment in our quest for pure and genuine religion? What "ritual" are we willing to give up so we are liberated to truly follow Christ's command to love God and love others? If so, what would we discover? If not, what are we afraid of?
In the meanwhile, my husband and I will keep going to church for the sake of others. And don't panic. While I am experiencing disillusionment with the religiosity of Christianity, my faith in the character, deity, and mission of Christ still stands, unwavering.