Finding God Outside the Box of Religion

by: Newbie

Finding God Outside the Box of Religion

            I ask myself sometimes what it means to be a Christian. I guess it means we follow the teaching of Jesus. My fear is that in the minds of others in the world who don’t believe in Jesus, we have begun to look a lot more like another religion, and a lot less like followers of Jesus.

             I find there, in that last statement, a profound line drawn. There is a huge difference between being a part of the religion of Christianity and following the teaching of Jesus. One of the major differences is that Jesus wasn’t religious. He didn’t have any friends who were good Christians, and he continually got attacked because he didn’t do the right actions for his religion. He ‘worked’ on the Sabbath, he touched people you weren’t supposed to, he talked to people who were to be avoided, and he hung out in places good religious people weren’t supposed to go. All of which angered the good ‘Christians’ of the time (by that, I mean the ruling religious people of the time, the center of the religion, focused primarily on the Pharisees and Sadducees). The piece that strikes me as the most ironic is that as you read this and you see the word Pharisee, you think, as most Christians do, that the Pharisees were an example of self righteousness and works doctrine, steeped in their religious system. So let me be very clear; it looks to me like contemporary Christianity, as a whole, has become a system of works and religious actions to be performed, missing the whole point of having a relationship with God, exactly like the Pharisees. Let me prove my point. I can throw out certain thoughts that will almost guarantee to activate the Pharisee in each of us.

            Here’s one: I don’t think it is Biblical to go to church. In fact, I think it misses and defeats the very vital and alive, ongoing relationship with Jesus that Jesus himself intended. I don’t think that it was ever his will or intention for us to gather in a multi million dollar icon of a building with multiple staff people who do the work of the church. Imagine for a moment that instead of offering our tithes and offerings to ‘God’s work’, we actually took the money and did God’s work? 90% of the money given to most church budgets goes to insure the continued function of the church. Furthering the ‘kingdom of church’ so we have a nice place to go on Sunday mornings is not doing the work of God, it is self-centeredness. Yet every Sunday we hear the same thing about giving to the Lord. No, what we give to is padding out ability to pay the electric bill and the property tax and the mortgage and the secretaries and the childcare workers and the ministers and our insurance and the pretty 4 color bulletins so nothing we do pushes people away. Of course, some of what we give goes to missions. But I wonder how much of our church budget ever even gets close to touching a real non believer? We design programs for believers to grow. We provide as many activities for good Christians to do as we can afford. We have ‘seeker’ programs designed to help good Christians reach their terribly heathen friends. But we do little to actually get out where ‘terrible heathens’ live and just love them.

            I have another suspicion floating around in the back of my mind. If we could take all the money we Christians use to build and support buildings for ourselves, and combine that with all the money we spend on entertaining ourselves through Christian books, Christian movies, Christian music, and Christian radio, we could feed the world and stop global hunger in under a week. We have a local radio station that needs over $97000 a month to stay on the air. So Christians can be entertained 24/7 and feel better about themselves and be reminded that God still loves them. How many non believers do we think really listen to us talk about how loving we are? This same Christian radio station brags that your support helps them stay advertisement free, yet they advertise themselves 10 to 15 times per hour! The saddest part of this is that on any given day, I can tune into 4 or more stations, just in my area that do the same thing. We have Christian curriculum so someone else can teach our children about Jesus. We have Christian paraphernalia of all sorts and sizes for our convenience and our blessing. If we were to take the money we spend on Christian radio and combine that with $65 concert tickets to see our latest Christian recording artist, combine that with the money we spend on the latest fad book on the latest Christian quick fix, we’d have more than enough money to meet real needs in the world. But obviously it is more important to have dozens of Christian magazines, to be instructed, again and again on how to have vibrant daily devotionals (a religious idea by the way - not Biblical idea). We can learn how we can increase our territory with God’s blessing or find seven promises that will make us better Christians. We can glean how to discern God’s will for our lives from some speaker with a really heavy southern accent (why do all TV preachers have an accent?). We must know how we can find purpose for our lives in 40 days, or how we can learn that laughing more could make us lose more weight.

Sunday morning has not only become a flagrant expression of our narcissism, it has become a subculture of disconnected, lost-touch-with-reality, self righteous hedonists with an agenda that speaks to making ourselves look good and the world look bad. We gather as the ‘better than’, and find our identity in our separateness. We tell ourselves that we are being just like Jesus. Of course, any good Christian knows that Jesus never hung out with bad people.

And of course, we can’t sin. Let’s forget for a moment that we are all sinners and Jesus came to die for our sin. Let’s continue to pretend we aren’t sinners, that we are all completely sanctified, and there is very little we need the spirit of God to do in us. Lets continue to gather at the big box on Sunday mornings and celebrate being saints, because you’ll get a very different response if you show up as someone in the middle of sin and in need of forgiveness or love or a friend.

            One of my favorite Christian authors is Brennen Manning He wrote in one of his books something about how we lose our way when we gather on Sunday mornings as saints and not as sinners. I like that a lot. Why do we pretend we have it all together, rather than bring our woundedness and hurt places to the gathering of the body? Or maybe I am the only one over here deeply angry at times, pretty lonely during certain sections of the journey, desperate for some understanding, and in need of a whole lot less judgment and condemnation. If I were to be really honest, it’s the J & D that keeps me from attending the Sunday morning circus. I know I am a profound sinner desperate for the touch of the master. I want to connect with other sinners, not with saints who are interested in fixing sinners. And I want to do that in a format that isn’t all about keeping the format in place. I want to gather, as Jesus did, in the bars, on the street corners, in the homes of good pagans, and hang out with people of il-repute.

            I’m sure that I have written at least one thing here that has offended every reader. I re-read what I have written and I see the judgment in my own sarcastic attitude. It bothers me that I gripe about others doing the very thing I am doing. That is why I need Jesus. That is why I long for him deeply, to know him and the power of his resurrection. Because I realize all that remains ‘in process’ inside of me and all the work His spirit must do in me.

            I am interested in a God who specializes in people like me; fearfully and wonderfully made. I am interested in a God who isn’t just loving, but who IS love. I am interested in a personal relationship with my Papa who feels nothing but love toward me (even when he’s angry). My Papa, who has little to do with religion or judgment or self righteousness. My Papa that loves beyond profound, beyond understanding, beyond imagination.

© 2007 Mike and Laura Ege, www.OutsideEdgeCoaching.com

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