“Religion almost killed me,” she said, then paused, waiting for my response.
I had no words. But I believed her – and I could identify. She saw it in my eyes.
As we sat in my home, silently grieving together, three images flashed through my mind, three moments from the previous year in my life.
Moments on the cusp
The first
I had just limped away from a cruel religious pummeling that would not stop. Alone in my car, driving who knows where, I cried aloud to God, “Whatever that was, I don’t want it to blindside me again! Lord, I want to see!”
The second
A few weeks later, my college-age daughter and I visited the largest Gothic building of the Middle Ages – the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, France.
Exploring the massive rooms, we learned, by audioguide, why seven popes ruled from there in the 1300’s. We roamed the inner sanctum of their intrigues.
Then, I stood in that monstrous shell of a palace, staring at the barren ostentation of religion. And I marveled: So much from so long ago and so far away sounded so familiar.
The third
A few more weeks passed. At home, reading the novel, The Face of God, I came upon a key scene – set in the Palace of the Popes.
There, an American pastor named Daniel asks his college-age son Tyler, “Did any of this stuff draw the people one inch closer to God?”
Previously, Tyler had shocked his dad by saying that religion kills, that in fact religion killed Jesus – and it killed the wife and mom both men loved.
Standing in that palace, Tyler says more. I read and reread his words:
“Religion is religion, Dad. It doesn’t matter how you disguise it. It’s all about guys in charge wanting to stay in charge. Get your little God machine built, stay as comfortable as possible, keep it running as long as possible.”
Daniel protests, and the conversation turns to talk of “defending truth” and having “a responsibility to the people.”
But Tyler presses in. “All religion cares about is being right and being in charge,” he insists. “Being in charge and making sure everyone who disagrees is either converted or destroyed.”1
The fourth
One after the other, each of those three moments flashed before me, in that fourth moment when a woman confided to me, “Religion almost killed me.”
The precious and the worthless
Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. (Matt. 11:28 MSG)
What a tender invitation! Jesus knew: I too was crushed. And spent. I wanted to go with him. But how could I, when so much that I had always connected with him was not him?
It helped to have a name for the counterfeit. Yet the precious and the worthless in my faith-life still seemed hopelessly tangled together. How could I possibly separate out the one from the other – and go with God?
“Yes, Lord!” my heart cried. “Just please show me religion as you see it. And please show me yourself.”
Was it my imagination? Or did he reply, “I thought you’d never ask.”
Religion that God accepts
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 NLT)
Hmm. There is religion that God calls worthless, and religion he accepts.2 In God’s eyes, worthless religion involves pride and self-deception, and the words and deeds they produce. “Pure and genuine religion” involves:
- Speaking what is full of grace.3
- Helping the forsaken and vulnerable.4
- Living in the world without drinking the Kool-Aid.5
How telling!
Religion that God accepts
“as pure and faultless”
has to do with the life
that each of us who knows him
lives before him.
It has nothing to do with systems, except to alert us to the toxic ones, and to keep us from swallowing what they’re selling.
Religion that God abhors
Religion, as Tyler described it, has everything to do with systems – the systems of this fallen world.
Repeatedly, the Spirit of Christ and the Word of God expose and condemn such religion. They warn us: Religiosity can entwine itself with true relationship to Christ and squeeze the life out of us. It can teach us to call what is godly evil, and what is toxic good. And thus, we swallow – and dispense – what kills.6
The Spirit and the Word also affirm the three things Tyler noted about the religion God abhors.
Always right
All religion cares about is being right.
We as Christians tend to see ourselves as defenders of truth.
It’s sobering to realize: So did the Pharisees.
The religious leaders of Jesus’ day studied and memorized the Old Testament Scriptures. They taught everyone else how to serve the one true God.
But collectively, they did not know, or live, the truth. Instead, they did everything in their power to silence the Truth. Convinced they were right about God, they fought against God.
The pride that blinds and binds
Religion teaches us to believe we too are right – about all things pertaining to God. It puffs us up with the pride that blinds and binds. It teaches us to silence what does not agree with us. It tells us to close our ears to anyone who:
- is not in our camp;
- does not echo everything we believe;
- does not keep the rules we teach;
- is our “inferior,” spiritually.
In Romans 10, Paul lamented this mindset in his own people. They’d had “plenty of opportunities … to listen and understand” the truths that challenged their beliefs about themselves and God. Yet still, they refused to accept that they “had no corner on [God’s] message.”
And so they did what Moses had foretold:
When you see God reach out to those
you consider your inferiors – outsiders! –
you’ll become insanely jealous.
When you see God reach out to people
you think are religiously stupid,
you’ll throw temper tantrums. (vv. 18-19 MSG)7
The humbling that keeps us teachable
None of us has a corner on God’s message either. And the Lord does not teach us to fixate on “being right.” Rather, he stirs us to press in to know him – and he reminds us that his ways are “past finding out.”8
In love, he humbles us, and teaches us to humble ourselves. Humility keeps us teachable. Refusing to assume, “We’re right, and they’re wrong,” we become open:
- To learn new things, even uncomfortable things, that God wants to show us.
- To learn what is – and is not – his voice, speaking through people.
Trusting in might
All religion cares about is being right and being in charge.
Down through time
When Jesus established the church, he created a holy people with a holy mission. Then, he returned to the Father and sent the Spirit. By the Spirit, God himself would indwell his people, powering both the holiness and the mission with love.
Three hundred years later, Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire. How wonderful that must have sounded to the persecuted church! A Christianity protected by the government. A Christianity that could influence the government.
The church system that Constantine approved soon grew to become the dominant religion in the empire. It gained great political power. It helped Constantine remain in power. In time, this system began to teach papal infallibility and papal supremacy, in effect: The pope is right, and the pope is in charge.
The people of God, the Word of God and the Spirit of God were marginalized. Ultimately, the shift to religious system ushered the church into the Dark Ages.
In the 16th century, the Reformation confronted some of the flawed assumptions and practices under which the church had operated for so long. The people of God reconnected with the Word of God. A radical shift took place.
Yet, many elements of religion remained firmly entrenched.
Still today
Even now, we tend to identify “the church” with structures implemented under Constantine – not with people from every tongue and tribe and nation, moving as one with the Spirit of God.
Even now, we tend to equate “obeying God” with following wherever our religious leaders lead. Yet Jesus warned us against blindly following human leaders. He taught that obeying God hinges on loving God and loving people.9
Still today, if someone promises to connect God and government in a way that gives our brand of Christianity special status and clout, we may want to believe, “This is from God!”
Yet still today, religion is of this world. Christ’s kingdom is not.10
When the Lord sees religion masquerading as true worship, he does not mince words.
“I can’t stand your religious meetings.
I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects,
your pretentious slogans and goals.
I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes,
your public relations and image making.
I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
I want justice – oceans of it.
I want fairness – rivers of it.
That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”
(Amos 5:21-24 MSG)
Cruel delight
All religion cares about is being right and being in charge …
Being in charge and making sure everyone who disagrees is either converted or destroyed.
Anyone who has been involved in “the church” for any length of time has a belief system with some measure of not-God-religion mixed in. How can we know what is religion and what is God? For starters, it’s religion if:
- It is spiritually impotent but self-important.
- It’s all about control, control, control.
- It. Is. Cruel.
Exposing the cruelty
If you’ve seen it, if you’ve experienced the religion that delights in cruelty – if, in fact, it has almost killed you – please know: That was not the Lord God. He hates cruelty. He despises heartlessness done in his name.
If you do not know what tyranny in the church looks like, but you’re willing for God to show you, take a step back, look around – and humbly ask him for eyes to see.
Ah, but do not look around at “them” – their religion, their brand of Christianity, their church. Instead, ask God to help you see your people, your church culture, your Christian family. Ask him to show you you. Ask him to show us us. Then, facing down fear, shame, pride – look at what he reveals.
Remember! Cruelty knows how to cover itself with a shiny, happy façade. Expect it to be well disguised, made to appear godly and good.
So how can you begin to see it? Watch for its rancid fruit.
With everybody listening, Jesus spoke to his disciples. “Watch out for the religion scholars. They love to walk around in academic gowns, preen in the radiance of public flattery, bask in prominent positions, sit at the head table at every church function. And all the time they are exploiting the weak and helpless.” (Luke 20:45-47 MSG)
Emerging whole
Religion exploits the weak and helpless.
It seeks to coerce or destroy those who disagree – especially, those who seek to follow the Lord himself.
But also, religion cruelly misleads those who bow before it. It deceives them into believing: This is the way to worship God, and also to get what I want. Ultimately, it leads them into a pit.
Paul experienced religion’s cruelty, and grieved it. He grieved for his people, including the leaders trying to destroy him. “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart,” he cried. Paul saw they were headed for a bridge out.
“I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge” (Rom. 9:2; 10:2).
Paul had been there. In his zeal, he too had persecuted people who knew the Lord. Then, Paul met Jesus, and came to him, and set out on a lifelong journey to know the Lord, personally and experientially.
Religiously speaking, Paul lost everything for Christ. The leaders who opposed him still had all that he’d previously valued. Yet even as he shared in Christ’s sufferings, Paul knew “the surpassing worth” of Jesus’ life in his very being, and the power of his Lord’s resurrection.11
He wanted everyone else trapped in religion to come to the Lord Jesus too.
Jesus experienced religion’s cruelty, and overcame it. Religious leaders who could not control him engineered his brutal death.
Yet the Lord Jesus lives! Religion could not destroy him, and it cannot destroy those who live in him.
Even when we suffer for following Christ, something freeing and healing is happening within us. In Christ, we emerge from the pummeling and the erasing, alive and whole.
Recover your life
Oh. Dear. God. How did I agree for so long with so much that opposes you? How did I not see it?
And still, the Lord Jesus answers my questions with questions, and with an invitation he extends to all.
Are you tired? Worn out?
Burned out on religion?
Come to me.
Get away with me and you’ll recover your life.
I’ll show you how to take a real rest.
Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it.
Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.
I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.
Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.12
This post is based on an e-column, titled “Religion vs. God,” published Feb. 14, 2006.
Featured image by Txllxt TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons: View of the quiet waters of the Rhône River, and in shadows on the opposite bank, Avignon, France. Just visible against the blue sky, the outline of the bell tower of Avignon Cathedral and the massive roof line of the Palace of the Popes.
Posts exploring the rest God gives
- I shall not want: Resting in God’s provision
- He restores my soul: Resting in God’s unforced rhythms
- I will fear no evil: Resting in God’s very present help
- My cup overflows: Resting in God’s favor
- Now and forever: Resting in God’s love
Footnotes
- Bill Myers, The Face of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002),137, 138. Trigger warning: Regretfully, I cannot recommend this book. It does not even begin to separate out the precious, that is Christ in us, from hurtful Christian religiosity. See my post, The people I quote. ↩︎
- Notice that these verses do not deal with how to attain salvation, but rather with God-approved ways to live it out. ↩︎
- See also Colossians 4:6. ↩︎
- As The Message puts it, “reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight” (James 1:27). ↩︎
- See also Jesus’ prayer for his own in John 17, especially vv. 6-19. ↩︎
- See scriptural examples of God’s condemnation of worldly religious systems in the rest of this post, and in the related posts linked within this post. ↩︎
- See Deuteronomy 32:18-21. ↩︎
- See Philippians 3:10-14; Romans 11:33-35 NKJV. ↩︎
- Don’t blindly follow, Matthew 15:14; Luke 6:39. Love God and people, Matthew 22:36-40. Love one another, John 13:34-35; 15:9-17. ↩︎
- See John 18:36. ↩︎
- See Philippians 3:3-14. ↩︎
- Matthew 11:28-30 MSG. ↩︎
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I am in tears as I read this. I feel so abandoned and lost but I know Jesus Christ is with me and leading me. The religious system all most killed me. It is rooted in my belief system and I am praying to be completely free, healed, and whole. I just want to know the Lord and to wholeheartedly follow Him. I have such disdain for the operation and manipulation of this religious system. Thank you for sounding the alarm. Blessings to you!
Hi, Christie. It’s hard to face hard things. It’s hard to speak up about them. Yesterday was hard for me. I cried, and told the Lord, “I am so alone.” This morning, I woke up to your comment. Thank you for sharing your heart. Thank you for your heartcry for God. You’ve blessed me.
Thank you, Lord, that you are grieving with Christie, with me, with all who love you. You are giving us your heart. Thank you that you are with us, and connecting us with one another. Your blessings are new every morning, even in the big middle of our pain.
* The blessing of mourning
* The blessing of the Lord
Hello, thank you for the article.
I initially found this blog when I was searching for the repercussions of shunning, as I’ve experienced it myself.
It has been more than 3 years ago now and it still hurts often.
I think no week passes without me thinking about it.
Our roads differ in that I actually [became a] Catholic.
Gods blessings and all kindness!
Bryan
Hi, Bryan. Thank you for pointing out that each of us is on a unique journey. That is so true. Blessings to you.
I understand your desire to defend your chosen church. However, I’ve edited all that out of your comments.
There are many venues for debating the merits of different church systems. Respectfully, this is not one of them. Rather, this is a safe place to dare to ask God what he finds indefensible in the church systems we most want to defend.
Thank you for speaking truth. This is such an amazing article. Blessings.
Thank you, Amy. Your encouragement means a lot to me. Blessings to you too!