Liberating you from bad ideas about God
Thanks goes to Eric Carpenter for this photo. His post also informed me that C. S. Lewis and John F. Kennedy both died on the same day.
I love this quote, but what I really love is that Lewis is smoking. I sure wish Lewis were alive today so he could weigh in on all that is going on Christianity.
It’s true what they say: all religions are the same.
And make no mistake, I am including the Christian religion in with that. All religions are the same, including the Christian religion.
All religions have at their core the idea that God is mad at the world and people have to do certain things to make God like them again. Usually, the good things that God wants us to do involve wearing silly hats, eating certain foods, and listening to some person talk for an hour before we give him money. This is true of any religion, whether Jewish, Muslim, Rastafarian, Santeria, Moorish Science Temple, Hindu, or… dare I say it? …Christian.
If you took away the hats, the robes, the names on the buildings, and some of the titles for “God” that different groups use, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between most of the world religions, …including Christianity.
The objection to the claim that all religions are the same is that “Christianity isn’t a religion; it’s a relationship! It’s a way of life!”
Right.
But do you know that this is what almost every person of every religion says? Almost nobody of any “faith group” thinks they are in a religion. If you ask the average “religious” person if they are in a religion, no matter what “religion” they follow, almost all of them will say, “No, I am not not in a religion, I practice a way of life.”
Nevertheless, almost everybody is in a religion, including most Christians. Most people believe God is mad at them for something they did or said, and they are doing certain things to try to make God happy again. The core of religion is that we can somehow pleas or appease God by our own good behavior or beliefs. If you believe that, then you are part of a religion, even you bear the name “Christian.”
Of course, I do consider myself a “Christian” in the sense that I am a follower of Jesus. I just think there is a vast difference between what has come to be known as Christianity, and what Jesus actually intended.
And when it comes down to what Jesus intended his followers to be and do, and what the religions of the world do (including the religion of Christianity), there are a few major differences. There are things that sets Jesus and His followers distinctly apart from all religious groups in history, including those religious groups that bear the name “Christian.”
So what sorts of things separate Jesus followers from all other religions in the world?
Well, I will tell you one thing that doesn’t separate us…. good works. You sometimes hear Christians say, “We are more generous, loving, kind, and forgiving.” That’s crap.
Sure, it’s true sometimes. But in my experience, some of the most forgiving, kind, and generous people I know are of some religion other than Christianity. Many of them are atheists.
You can always find another religious group that is behaves better than many Christians.
So, it seems to me that the main difference between Jesus and every man-made religion in the world (including the Christian religion) boils down to one word: grace. But not the watered down grace you hear preached from pulpits and described in books.
No, the one thing that separates what Jesus revealed to the world and what we see in all religious groups is one thing: indiscriminate, scandalous, shocking, outrageous, senseless, irrational, unfair, irreligious, ridiculous, absurd, offensive, infinite grace.
If you don’t hold to this kind of grace, it might be because you are part of a man-made religion, even if you call yourself “Christian.”
I am someone who came out of the Christian religion and now follows Jesus on the way of grace.
As a reader of this blog, you are probably similar. Together, we challenge some of the ideas and practices of Christianity. We raise questions about what Scripture really teaches, what God is really like, and what it means to be the church in the world today. We look for ways to reveal the scandalous grace of God to the world, raising questions about justice, righteousness, forgiveness, and love.
All religions are the same, which is partly why I am not part of any religion. I do follow Jesus, but try to do so in a religionless way. How about you?
Frank Viola wrote a post recently about a book about Bono, lead singer for U2.
I have been a U2 fan for nearly 25 years, although the more recent albums have not really been my favorite…. but whatever.
In the book, Bono had this to say about Jesus, grace, and religion. I don’t know much about the rest of Bono’s theology, but if these statements are any guide, Bono gets it!
My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ. Christ teaches that God is love. What does that mean? What it means for me: a study of the life of Christ. Love here describes itself as a child born in straw poverty, the most vulnerable situation of all, without honor. I don’t let my religious world get too complicated. I just kind of go: Well, I think I know what God is. God is love, and as much as I respond [sighs] in allowing myself to be transformed by that love and acting in that love, that’s my religion. Where things get complicated for me, is when I try to live this love. Now that’s not so easy.
There’s nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is. I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that’s why they’re so relatable. But the way we would see it, those of us who are trying to figure out our Christian conundrum, is that the God of the Old Testament is like the journey from stern father to friend. When you’re a child, you need clear directions and some strict rules. But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.
Religion can be the enemy of God. It’s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building. [laughs] A list of instructions where there was once conviction; dogma where once people just did it; a congregation led by a man where once they were led by the Holy Spirit. Discipline replacing discipleship. Why are you chuckling?
It’s a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.
I really believe we’ve moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace. You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics; in physical laws every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.
Forget for a moment that you live 2000 years after the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, and forget that you have the New Testament which tells you about who Jesus was and what He did. Imagine that you pick up an ancient history book and it tells you about three men who were put to death around 33 BC for religious and political crimes. Two of them were criminals and one was a rabble-rouser, a trouble-maker, and a blasphemer. If you knew nothing else about these three men, you would assume they were most likely guilty.
Imagine furthermore that rather than living 2000 years after the fact, you were a Jewish person who lived at the time of Jesus. If you had heard anything from the Jewish rabbis of your day, you would know that this man named Jesus was a threat to the peace, order, safety, and security of your life within the Roman Empire.
If Jesus was the Messiah, as He claimed, He would rise up in revolt against the Roman invaders, but since He clearly did not want to go to war with the Romans, and since He often said things that directly challenged the traditions and teachings of the religious leaders, and sometimes He even seemed to say blasphemous things about the Temple and about YHWH Himself, well, Jesus was guilty. He had to die because He was guilty.
And when He did die, they hung Him on a cross. It was a gruesome sight, but that was evidence enough of His guilt. God had seen fit to judge this blasphemer named Jesus by hanging Him on a tree, for as the Scriptures say, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.”
Yes, this was evidence that God also was upset about what this man named Jesus was teaching, and had seen fit to make Him a public spectacle in the sight of all so that nobody would ever again seek to challenge the teachings of the religious leaders or the traditions of the Jewish people.
Yes, if you were a Jew living 2000 years ago, and if you saw Jesus hanging on the cross, you most likely would have thought that He was a guilty criminal who had come under the curse of God. You would be revolted and sickened by His appearance.
But looking back now, we know that Jesus was not guilty. He did not sin. He died a criminal’s death because He went there willingly, as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, to take our sins upon Himself and bear them into death. But we only know this because Jesus rose from the dead and told His disciples that this is what happened, and the disciples taught it to others and wrote about it in the Bible, and the Apostle Paul—the greatest theologian in history—wrote about this theme in many of his letters.
So it is also with God.
From our human perspective, a God who enters into human affairs in the way that God did in the Old Testament looks guilty. Just like Jesus on the cross. As outsiders, when we look upon the appearance of God in the Old Testament, we see a guilty criminal who is doing things that nobody should ever do. This also is exactly the way some people looked at Jesus. When we read about some of the brutal and bloody things that the Israelites did in God’s name, God appears ugly and revolting. In many of the depictions there is no beauty or comeliness, that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by many. We do not esteem Him. Just like Jesus (cf. Isa 53:1-3).
In his book, The Multiplying Church, Bob Roberts writes this:
Let’s start a thousand churches over the next ten years, each one running a minimum of two thousand members, and in just ten years we will turn America upside down with the gospel! That would work, right?
Wrong – that scenario just happened over the past ten years, and there are fewer people in church today than ever before.
How can that be?
How could we have spent billions to start two thousand megachurches and yet have fewer people in church and a society that largely feels the church is antagonistic?
The answer (in my opinion) is that most of the people who start to go to those new churches are not new Christians, but people who were already Christians and who transferred to the new and exciting church. Most of the church plants grew by transfer growth, not church growth. Others have pointed out the supporting statistic that every year about 4,000 churches close their doors … forever.
Then today, I was reading an article called “Change-Seekers” in World Magazine, which summarized the major study of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (available here). The study revealed that currently only 51% of Americans are “Protestant,” down from 60-65% in the 1970s. The only “religious group” actually increasing in numbers are those who identify themselves as “non-religious.” They comprise 16% of America, and have nearly doubled in number since the 1980s. Then the author of the article says this:
Despite the church growth movement and the proliferation of megachurches, evangelical Christianity is losing ground. Growing churches often have high turnover. [Are they going to other new churches with a better show?] The issue is not how to gain new members but how to keep the ones churches already have.
In The Multiplying Church Bob Roberts says that problem our churches face is that we are not seeing true life transformation in those who attend our churches.
I found this insightful, especially since on Friday, I read a book by Neil Cole called Cultivating a Life for God in which he reveals a way of discipling people which has resulted in amazing life transformation in the people that have done it worldwide. But the beauty of what he proposes is that this life transformation does not depend on the systems and structures that have come to be known as “church.” Instead, his proposal is simple, free, and easily reproducible. I just started reading his newest book, Search & Rescue, which appears to be an updated remix of Cultivating a Life for God.
It is my opinion that the way we do “church” today is more often than not a hindrance to the spread of the gospel and the making of disciples.
The death of churchianity is coming, and while it saddens me when churches close, I am also excited because I believe that a new movement of God is coming upon His people whereby we throw off the things that hinder what He is doing in our lives, communities, and countries, and embrace a new (actually old) way of being the church.
This new/old way will not need millions of dollars to sustain itself the way churchianity does.
It will live out the gospel among the people of this world by serving, living, and loving them, rather than just teaching facts.
Unlike churchianity, this new way of following Jesus will transform lives and communities. It will not require advanced degrees of education, high-powered leadership structures, costly buildings, expensive advertising, salesmanship routines, light shows and Hollywood gimmicks.
Those who leave churchianity won’t need experts to interpret Scripture for us, or to organize our discipleship programs and outreach events. Following Jesus outside churchianity won’t be limited to a single day, or a particular event.
When churchianity dies, we will stop going to church and simply be the church, the body of Christ. The death of churchianity precedes the resurrection of the church.
Therefore, since churchianity is dying, and we shouldn’t fight it. Churchianity is on life support and is begging us to pull the plug (which is why I wrote my book, Close Your Church for Good.
And as Churchianity fades away, I am beginning to see glimmers of light as the grime from centuries of tradition is scrubbed away, and the glory of God begins to manifest itself among groups of Christians who just want to live life like Jesus in their communities.
(Note: After writing this post, I learned that before he died, Michael Spencer wrote a book called Mere Churchianity. I haven’t read it, but it looks good.)
