Day 04 - Your views on religion.

This is a good question. Nice and broad.
In fact, the concept of religion, Christian culture, and Christian life has been a constant background thought process of mine ever since going to a Christian college with some different doctrines than those which I grew up with. The greatest impression I left college with is how sad it is to see Christians being divided over silly things; things that are not essential to Salvation. There are plenty of differences in doctrine between Protestant churches, let alone between Protestants and Catholics and Lutherans etc. Besides that, the more I study about American culture and missionary work the more I realize that many self-proclaimed conservative Christians are slipping back into the recipe of "do's" and "don't's" of the Jews then we try and transplant that culture into other cultures instead of trying to spread the Good News and just the Good News! Rules such as don't let your kids be brainwashed at public schools, do study and believe in young earth Creationism and propagate that teaching wherever you go, do set up a strict courtship ritual with your daughter long before she is eligible, do require your daughters to stay at home until they get married, don't drink, don't socialize with "wicked people" and on and on and on.

I, for one, am glad that Jesus spoke with tax collectors and harlots and sinners for I was a sinner before I gave up my pride and thanked Jesus for paying the price for my crimes and committing to follow him the rest of my life. He deigned to spend time with me: a non-practicing Jew born from a generation of non-practicing Jews. Such a big no no! For some people it would take a lot of chutzpah to have anything to do with the God of the Jews after that! Anyway... Unfortunately, at some point, the Jews lost the meaning of the rituals and sacrifices and thought of them as the end-all to righteousness instead of seeing them as a series of big fat arrows pointing to Yeshua, the Messiah. We know this because Jesus spends a lot of his time razing the Jewish leaders of the day who were more interested in rituals and looking good than teaching the people about Jehovah. Also, Jesus and many of the New Testament writers spend a lot of time discussing this topic of ritual, or "religion," versus commitment.

At this point it would be beneficial for me to define what I think to be core beliefs to being a Christ-follower. My favorite encapsulation of the Christian faith is the Nicene Creed, originally drafted in 325 AD, the modern (and slightly clarified) version called the 1975 ecumenical version (ICET) is what I will quote here (thanks to www.Wikipedia.com).

We believe in one God,

the Father, the Almighty

maker of heaven and earth,

of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

of one Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us men and for our salvation

he came down from heaven:

by the power of the Holy Spirit

he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

he suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again

in accordance with the Scriptures;

he ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,

and his kingdom will have no end

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of Life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.

He has spoken through the Prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead,

and the life of the world to come. Amen.

If you think the creed misses a topic of dogma outlined in Scripture, I would love to hear your comments.

The big question is do you consider any modern Christian rituals to be more important than your communion with Jesus himself? Any rules you talk about alongside the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as if they are one and the same? What about home-schooling? What about your definition of courtship? What about your definition of "good" Christian music? What about how often you do or don't remember the Lord's Supper? At this point in the book of Isaiah, the prophet is referring to what will come in the culture of the Jews when the Messiah comes to his people.

Isaiah 29
 15"Because ^(S)this people draw near with their words
         And honor Me with their lip service,
         But they remove their hearts far from Me,
         And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote,
    ¹⁴Therefore behold, I will once again deal ^(T)marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous;
         And ^(U)the wisdom of their wise men will perish,
         And the discernment of their discerning men will be concealed."

And here is where Jesus quotes the prophecy

Matthew 15:8-9 These people draw near to Me with their mouth, And honor Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

And here, the Apostle Paul refers to the same thing:

Titus 1:13-14 Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn from the truth.

The following passage is Paul again writing to the people of Colossi in reference to whether they could or should eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols. That meat was significantly cheaper at the markets and it is what their unbelieving family and neighbors would serve. Would eating that meat mean participating in the worship of other gods? Note that Paul's audience here were mostly gentiles, not Jews, so I won't get into kosher issues though most people believe that it applies there as well.

Colossians 2    ²⁰ Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: ²¹ “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? ²² These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. ²³ Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

Even in the Old Testament this topic is mentioned!

          1 Samuel 15:22

                       But Samuel replied: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.

And when John asks for assurance of who Jesus is:

Matthew 11   ² When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples ³ to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”  ⁴ Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: ⁵ The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy^[b] are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. ⁶ Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” ...  ²⁸ “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  

John was in prison and potentially facing death. Was this really the Messiah or someone else? Is this really a good enough reason to die? When Jesus heard his fear and doubt he didn't send back a list of do's and don't's. "Did you honor your parents? Did you keep the feasts? Did you follow all the law?" No. That wasn't important to him. He simply quoted a prophecy about himself (Isaiah 61:1-2) which focused on the signs of his ministry. Not our duty. His ministry.

That is all I have for tonight but if you can't tell this is an important topic to me! I don't know about you but it seems to me this is an important topic to God, too. Please comment if you are interested. I would love to discuss this concept with more people!

If you want to read more on this topic I recently shared this blog post on Google Reader and I totally agree with the author. You might also want to peruse www.elizabethesther.com because she has an interesting perspective on religion having come out of a hyper fundamentalist background. Her early blog posts are the most interesting. A fun little tidbit is after starting to read her blog I found out that she and some of Tim's family know each other. I also enjoy reading some of the perspective of an author who was engaged to a girl from a fundamentalist family until the family convinced the girl to break it off. You can find that at Commandments of Men.