Religion is a sickness…

…and Christ is the Cure


A fellow blogger wrote in an excellent article today the following…

"To be honest, I'm tired of being religious. It's exhausting, isn't it? All this moral striving, and for what? Religion as a series of habits and rituals can be a pointless venture.

"If it doesn't lead to Life, then it must lead to Death, no matter how "nice" or "good" it looks. And if we get caught up in defining "right and wrong" by our own moral striving, then we miss the boat. One can't live a good life by simply avoiding the darkness. Rather, Jesus tells us to abide in him, the Light (John 15:4).

"So, I am learning to be done with this frivolous game of people-pleasing and hiding my own brokenness."

And I saluted him with… Axios! You have found the right way.

It is on this basis that I describe myself as a non-religious Christian. The second paragraph quoted above, "If it doesn't lead to life…" reminds me of the line in The Matrix where Morpheus tells Neo about the matrix, that it permeates everything, it's there with you even "in church."

The way of religion as you describe, that exhausting way of moral striving, habitual behaviors and the performance of rituals, yes, these do indeed constitute "religion," the classic definition of which is, man's attempt to win justification by his own efforts. This was the pre-existing (religious) condition that Christ was born into, and which He abolished by His death on the cross, His resurrection from the dead, and His ascending to the Father.

Abolished.
Christ was and is the end of religion for those who follow Him.

Does this mean that we stop "going to church," stop praying, stop doing "good deeds" and so on? Heaven forbid! Unless and only if we have been doing these things to appease God.

The love which God the Father has lavished on us through the sacrifice of His Son and all that proceeds from it, when we receive that, we cannot help but pass that love on to the world around us in our fulfillment of the commandments.

What commandments?
Well, the two great ones, to begin with: Love the Lord with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Do we gain heaven by this?
Not at all.

Does it exhaust us to follow these commandments?
No, because love never gets tired.

Why not? Because it is not we who do the work, it is Christ in us.

Is this striving for moral perfection?
No, again because we are not doing the work, it flows from us as springs of living water, but it does purify, not only us but others around us. This is why the following of Jesus, even within the context of institutional Christianity, need not be religious, indeed must not be, else it is what you describe at the beginning of your article, "To be honest, I'm tired of being religious…"

Religion is a sickness, and Christ is the cure.