God is Religious
There’s no getting around it—this is going to sound sacrilegious.
God is not religious.
That’s right. Take a breath, let that sink in, and realize that there’s more to this than you think.
The Pharisees were religious. In fact, they were the religious elite—the teachers and leaders of Christ’s day. But all of their convoluted, manmade doctrine failed in the face of Christ’s teachings.
Here’s what Jesus had to say to them.
“They pile heavy burdens on people’s shoulders and won’t lift a finger to help. Everything they do is just to show off in front of others. They even make a big show of wearing Scripture verses on their foreheads and arms, and they wear big tassels for everyone to see. They love the best seats at banquets and the front seats in the meeting places. And when they are in the market, they like to have people greet them as their teachers.”
These Pharisees—and many of our religious leaders today—fail because they think that they can work their way into God’s graces by adhering to laws that they, rather than God, created.
But there is a difference between manmade religion, based on human preconceptions and ideals, and the Christian Church, established by Christ and continued on through the centuries. It is in recognizing this distinction that this lie is broken—in recognizing the difference between a relationship with God, and a relationship with laws.
Is it in the first that you’ll find true Christianity.
