If I had a dollar for every time I heard the phrase, “I’m spiritual, but not religious,” I’d be a wealthy woman. It’s a popular — and prideful — sentiment these days.
Another favorite is, “I’m a Christian, but I don’t have to prove it by going to church.”
(Silly me…here I thought church was about celebrating my beautiful Savior and hearing the word of God proclaimed, in community with other believers, because that’s what I love to do.)
I suppose people mean they can exercise the spiritual dimension of their lives without the help of a church/temple/synagogue, a holy book, or a priest/rabbi/pastor. Those accoutrements represent religion to them.
I would argue that religion can be defined differently.
According to the dictionary, religion is :
In other words, our religion is what we believe about life and about how people should act.
It’s the basis for the way we live our lives, and why we do certain things repeatedly. It’s whatever we give our strength to and get our strength from.
Whatever we talk about most and pour our time, energy and money into is what we worship.
By that definition, everyone is religious — atheists included.
Here are a few examples of religious beliefs that don’t involve traditional externals:
- Environmentalism — you feel strongly about treating the earth with kindness. You recycle and try to reduce your carbon footprint. Issues like clear cutting timber and oil spills greatly upset you. You give to groups that work at protecting the environment.
- Nutrition — you are passionate about helping people eat right. Sugar, bad fats and GMO foods are the great evil you fight. You are happy to spend extra to put good food into your body. You spend hours reading articles on nutrition.
- Fishing — this is your favorite activity. You spend every spare moment either tying flies or wetting a line. You are obsessed with getting that trophy trout this year. Your best buddies are people who are passionate about the same thing. Sometimes your family gets in the way of your obsession.
You get the idea. Your religion could be lawn care or animal rights or video games. It doesn’t really matter what form it takes.
What makes it your religion is that it takes first priority in your life.
The Bible doesn’t mention the word religion much. Here’s one of the only references:
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”–James 1:27
Leading into this, James says if a person doesn’t bridle their tongue but deceives their heart, their “religion” is worthless.
So here we get a peek into the only kind of religion that impresses God: He wants us to exercise self-control in our speech, take care of those who need our protection and our resources, and keep our hearts pure.
How and where do we exercise such religion? In community — specifically, the community of faith. So we come full circle back to church.
Read through Acts and the epistles, and you’ll see that believers gathered together regularly for the purpose of worship, fellowship, teaching, corporate prayer, and so on.
Church is where we do the “one anothers” of Scripture — love one another, bear with one another, bear one another’s burdens.
So I’m totally okay with being religious. I would love to be accused of putting Jesus first in my life.
What’s your religion?
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