Jesus vs. Religion

My friend once asked me "If religion is so great, why has it caused so many wars?"  My friend certainly has a good point.  I mean, if religion is so great why has it started so many wars?  Why does it build huge houses of worship, but fails to feed the poor?  I told him in response "What if I told you Jesus came to abolish Religion?"

 If you define Religion as “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe,” then yes, Christianity is a religion, but by this definition, so is atheism.  So let us look at religion as a faith.  Religion: “What one must do, or behave like, in order to gain right standing with God,” then real Christianity is not a religion.  Real Christianity centers on righteousness of Jesus, not on our righteousness.  

Religion is about man seeking God.  Jesus is God seeking man.  Religion says do.  Jesus says done.  Religion is pursuing God by our moral efforts.  Jesus is God pursing us despite our moral efforts.  Religious people kill for what they believe Jesus followers die for what they believe.  To sum up this message, I will use the words of Justin Wren, a former UFC fighter who became a born again Christian and the founder of the organization "Fight for the Forgotten," which is dedicated to helping the Pygmies in the Congo: "If a faith teaches you only to follow a long list of rules, but not to build a relationship with God, then leave, because it's false."  

In truth, the Bible is love letter.  It shows us that we are God's children, not his employees.  It’s not about my performance, but the performance of Jesus for me.   The Pure Gospel is that Jesus alone saves us, not Jesus+Good Behavior, or Jesus+Mosaic Law, or Jesus+Cultural Customs.  As former PLO terrorist Tass Saada explained, Jesus came here to build relationship, not religion.  Ethnicity, gender, skin color, none of this is what matters.  We're one in the Body of Christ.  This doesn't mean we're one in the same, we are one body, of many parts.  

Many misinterpret the Old Testament, we like to focus on the good, like how King David stood his ground against Goliath, the Wisdom of Solomon, or Elijah calling fire down from Heaven, but we fail to see the bigger picture.  Everyone in the Old Testament fell short of the Glory of God.  King Solomon gave into his lust and married 700 women.  King David had an affair and tried to hide his sin by having the husband of his adulteress killed.  Elijah feared persecution and fled into hiding instead of keeping his faith and standing strong.  Even Moses fell short and was forbidden to enter the Promised Land as a result.  The message of the Bible is that we are all sinners in need of saving grace, the grace that Jesus gave us on the Cross.  We always want to point out the shortcomings of others in our world, but we are not so quick to confess our own shortcomings.  In fact, didn't Jesus expose this?  When a woman was caught in the act of adultery and brought before him, did he not say in John 8:7 "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone."  Nobody condemned this woman, because in truth, we are all sinners.  We all fall short of God's eternal glory.  The Old Testament shows how the world is aligned, and how we as sinners cannot redeem ourselves, we can only be redeemed by God's grace.  The Bible was not given to us so we could highlight and underline our way into eternity, but in hopes that we would have a special encounter with our Creator.  Jesus is quite clear: We are not at the center of the Scriptures, He is.  Jesus is essentially stating that the entire Old Testament is about him.  The Old Testament was full not of Great Heroes, but Great Failures that Jesus worked through.

So many people read the Bible, but they don't comprehend it.  People will say "I tried Christianity, it failed me."  I was one of these people.  In truth, I did not try Christianity.  I tried religion.  I tried going to weekly confessionals, I tried saying the rosary every day, but I wasn't getting it.  I wasn't confessing my sins to God with sincerity, nor was I praying from the heart.  It was after I read Jefferson Bethke's book "Jesus vs. Religion" that I understood.  Jesus did not come here to crush us with religious law, like the Pharisees sought to do in the Gospels, but he came here to fulfill it for us.  

When Jesus came, he showed us that Faith will no longer be wrapped in a building, but it will be wrapped up in every soul who loves him.  We still concern ourselves with earning righteousness with God, but we fail to realize that when we let Jesus into our hearts, we will do righteousness not in the hopes of earning favor, but because it is right, and for no other reason.  It is when you surrender to his will that Jesus comes & grants you grace.  

Sources:

Bethke, Jefferson.  Jesus vs. Religion: Why He is so Much Better than Trying Harder, Doing More, and Being Good Enough.  Nashville: Nelson Books.  2008.

Saada, Tass.  Once an Arafat Man.  Clarksville, TN: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.  2008.  

Wren, Justin.  Fight for the Forgotten.  New York: Howard Books.  2015.