PrintI Hate Religion (2)
In light of my last entry I need to say that I am not going through a faith crisis!. I continue to be a committed and convinced follower of Jesus Christ. I just find that I have come to the place where I hate religion.
Perhaps I had better define what I mean by "religion". In my last entry I described religion as any system of beliefs and behaviour that is devised by human ingenuity and that claims to represent and act on behalf of some particular god or gods to the end that it disempowers, controls and manipulates people.
True faith – as opposed to religious systems – is the result of divine revelation, not human innovation. True faith is a human response to a divine initiative (revelation), not a human initiative to evoke a divine response (innovation). In other words, we can only experience true faith as God reveals Himself to us and we respond appropriately to that revelation.
On the other hand, religion is any human attempt to reach out to a god or gods and, through religious acts and rituals, try to get that god/s to respond to us favourably. What I am seeing with increasing clarity is that it is possible for individuals and/or groups to hijack genuine revelation, twist it and distort it until it becomes religion.
Wherever that happens, the liberating power of true faith is neutralized and the followers become imprisoned in rules and regulations. That's why I hate religion!
