This meme made me a good laugh last week and remembered a note by an FB friend, Richard W. Daniels, on the mentioned post modern day Christianity cliche. Read on and get straight to the true religion!
"If I were writing a blog entitled “Lies Contemporary Well-intentioned Christians Believe and Pass on to Others” this one would be at the top of the list. Numero Uno. Personally, I think that few more false, illogical and misleading statements have ever been so popular among Christians. In the first place, it assumes as contradictory things that are not contradictory at all. You would think it silly to say, “Mr. Smith is not a musician, He is a father,” because there is no contradiction between being a father and a musician. Actually, the statement “Christianity is not a religion it is a relationship,” is even sillier than that; it is more akin to the statement, “Mr. Smith is not a man who loves his children, doing his best to lovingly and wisely provide for them, protect them from harm, and train them up to be happy adults, he is a father.”
Before I go on to show that the statement “This is not religion, it’s a relationship” is just that silly, let me say something about the oft-misused criticism, of the word “religion.” The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines religion as “The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods,” “a particular system of faith and worship,” “a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.” “Religion” when it is used in contrast to “a relationship with a person, Jesus Christ” is usually defined as something like “’religion is man’s attempt to reach up to God; the gospel is God’s reaching down to man.”
As a matter of fact, all false religions are just that—man’s human-invented way of responding to the “God-sense” within him. Many theologians call this universal “sense of deity” the “seed of religion.” All sincere “religious” devotion, whether it issues inin cleaning up after church suppers, or in suicide bombing, of missionary zeal, labors for the abolition of slavery, faithfulness springs from this seed, this sense of a god who we desire for our soul’s completeness, and to whom we are somehow responsible. It is no wonder that there are so many people feeling this way, that there should be so many religions in the world, as men and women “reach up to god” as they understand him.
The real difference is not between the Christian relationship and the Christian religion but between a right religion based on a right relationship with the right God vs. wrong religions based on wrong relationships with the wrong gods.
And, if it is objected “How can you be so arrogant as to say such a thing as your religion is right and the others are wrong?”
The answer is that God has, in fact, reached down to man in the gospel, to establish a relationship to him, a relationship based on grace, not on religious performances of any kind, a relationship through the coming of God’s answer for man’s ignorance of the true nature of his reality, God’s answer for man’s failed relationship with His creator, God’s answer for man’s inadequacy to keep and perfect himself. This answer is His Son Jesus Christ.
I will cut it to the chase. First, all “personal relationships” assume some exchange, some kind of give and take. Even in the most unbalanced of relationships like a mother nursing her infant, where one seems to give all the giving and the other seems to take all the taking, there is still, at least, the joy the giver has in giving to that special person and the pleasure the receiver has in receiving from that special person or there can hardly be said to be any “relationship” at all. There is a certain “regard.”
In a friendship, friends have a regard for their friends; they recognize the personal likes, dislikes, virtues, faults, needs, etc. of the other and the relationship works because the parties to that relationship understand and work within the parameters of the relationship; spouses sharing some things, siblings sharing different things, teachers and students sharing still other things, but some regard MUST be had for the things which are appropriate for the person with whom I have a relationship or, it’s not that the relationship ceases, but it is wrong, there is a falseness to it. A friend must be friendly, a parent must be shown the regard of a parent, words like “girlfriend” or “boyfriend” communicate a certain special regard (e.g., “Why haven’t you called ?”), or the names are used “in vain.”
To go back to my “silly” comparison above about Mr. Smith, to make my point I would have to show that being “religious” is just as much a part of having a true relationship with Christ as doing ones best to do what a father does is of the essence of being a father. To be a father is to have a relationship with somebody, but to be a father to whom the name rightly belongs is to do what a father does. Every abandoned child adopted by such a father recognizes the truth of this. It is inseparable from the notion of “father.” Likewise, being religious, i.e. being a practitioner of true religion, being a “disciple” is inseparable from the notion of Christian.
The suggestion that one may have a non-religious relationship to Jesus Christ is false for just this reason: True religion is having the relationship with Jesus Christ that Jesus Christ wants us to have with Him. Can I show this to be so? Easily. Indeed, it is impossible to show the contrary. Using the Dictionary definition, that religion is “The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods,” “a particular system of faith and worship,” “a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion” we find that this is exactly what a relationship with Christ involves. First, it is a relationship that involves belief in Christ, which is to place one’s personal trust in the incarnate son of God as He reveals Himself to us in His word, the Bible. He is who He is, and a relationship with a different Christ than the one revealed in the Bible is not a “gospel” relationship with Christ but a rejection of Him. Second, if it is a relationship with this biblical Christ, it is a relationship which elicits worship. Nobody ever had a relationship with him that did not either hate him and deny him and say, “we will not have this man rule over us!” or fall at his feet in adoration, and desire to lovingly sit at his feet to hear him reveal His mind and heart and will.
Relationship involves communication, and He has taught that He communicates to us through the reading and preaching, by His gifted and called servants. A relationship with Him will mean pursuing the knowledge of Him with great devotion through the use of the means of doing this which He has provided. It will also mean communicating back to him in the way He has prescribed, through private and public prayer, meditation, and the singing of hymns.
Having a relationship with Him His way, will require, it is not optional, it will require having a certain kind of relationship with his other children, a relationship which is committed to mutual care, mutual accountability, and a common commitment and endeavor to promote His cause in the community and in the world. This requires, again, it is not requirement for the creation of the relationship, but the inseparable manifestation of its existence.
In conclusion, my relationship with Christ is one in which all I am. He is my life. The expression of that life is a religion absolutely unique among the religions of the world, it is expressed in self-denying life of cross-bearing discipleship,in visiting the widow and orphan in practical service, it is “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost,” and it is true. "
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Note: photo by Christian Memes
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