An excuse to behave badly

I take issue with the statement “I have a relationship not a religion.”  It is not that I find it incorrect, but what I hear is that most of those repeating that phase are using it as an excuse to behave badly and to live selfishly.  Granted some do not.  They truly understand the damage of living our spiritual lives in a liturgical box and then having our fleshly life lived in disregard for the one who offers us life.

Jesus did not come to start a new religion.  Neither did he die to make mankind comfortably immoral while claiming a ‘relationship’ to God.  He said “Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees you cannot enter heaven.”  Yet the righteousness he speaks of comes from a heart desire to serve a living, righteous God, not from a rule book.  Somehow we have discarded the morals, the guidelines and any concept of righteous living for a ‘relationship’ with God.  According to God’s own words, that won’t work.

The problem with rulebook living is it does not worship or exalt the one we are to serve.  It is an exterior control meant for those who have no relationship to a righteous God.  It’s like the difference between the average employee who only serves for a paycheck and so must be controlled, and the son who will one day inherit the business. Yet that righteous God gave us the rules as a measure of good to lead us to the realization that we are in need of grace and God’s Spirit who will lead us to an inward standard that is higher and more meaningful than the rule.  For those who have bonded their heart and spirit to God’s heart and Spirit, life becomes a learning, changing, and renewing experience.  The fruit of that bond with God’s Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control and it grows as we grow with him.

By the Spirit, the early church leaders declared only 3 rules:  Avoid eating or drinking blood, avoid things offered to idols, and avoid sexual immorality.  They are very specific and yet very broad rules.  But when you read it, you see that that was based on the knowledge that these people had a law within themselves producing a higher ethic than the original law.  It was not meant to release them to a life of ignorance, immorality or unethical behavior.

Today people claiming Christ have become selfish, unprincipled and unrestrained in a claim to ‘freedom in Christ.’  Yet we become free in Christ to serve God through his Spirit.  The bible tells us that those who do not walk in the Spirit live in condemnation.  The ‘therefore now no condemnation’ is for those who do not pursue fleshly desires but who pursue a Spirit life.  It clearly states that when we desire the works that the natural, earthy man follows that we have no clue about the true life in God’s Spirit.  These oppose each other and we must either give ourselves to a holy God who will lead us into righteousness and life or we must give ourselves to this world and its ideas and pleasures which will lead us to death.

There will be those who scream “Don’t judge!”  “God said ‘Don’t judge.’”  When that was written, it was in a discourse of how bad judgment leads us to a reprobate life and condemnation.  Pronouncing a condemnation on any other person when you are behaving in a similar way brings heightened judgment.  Pronouncing judgment on any other person is not my intent.  But having good judgment in this world is imperative.  It is not for me to condemn others to punishment or pronounce some ill on them.  But the ability to see the wrong in this world is needed and the desire to warn those who will listen is needed.  No! our voice must not be silenced by the evil bent in our society. 

My belief is not bound to the rule book, yet there are passages in the bible that list the ‘works of darkness’ and claim destruction for those who walk that path.  My sadness, the intensity of my despair is in seeing those I love following those ‘works of darkness’ and claiming a ‘relationship not a religion.’  And I suppose if you are reading this, I am speaking to the ‘choir.’  But it is how I see it and I felt I must say it.  It charges my prayer life but it saddens my heart.