A Religion of Irrelevance

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Chapter 6: Religiosity

Finding Freedom from the
Confines of Human Tradition
(Part Two)

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Religiosity Versus Truth

     Religiosity also results when tradition takes the place of truth. It is when we find ourselves just going through the motions, with the excuse, This is the way we've always done it. It constitutes a lack of vision, and a narrow view of what the true Christian experience is. With legalism we distort our own view of spirituality and holiness. Religiosity is one effect of such distortions, and results in the world receiving, through Christians, a distorted view of the Gospel.
     Because of this the typical local body of believers often comes across in such a negative way to the unbeliever, that it is often the last place they would go for answers. This may be why most American church groups grow only when they can successfully proselytize. It's painfully obvious that most attempts at evangelism are having little impact. We could go through hundreds of reasons why people do not respond to the Gospel, but as long as we allow our religion to block the unbeliever's view of truth there is little hope for effectual evangelism.
     When what starts out as living vibrant truth turns to dead boring ritual it is often the result of laziness. It's easier just to let tradition take the place of reason, all that is necessary is to maintain the status quo. No uncomfortable shifts in the way things are done, no pondering on how to keep truth relevant to an ever changing world. It's the path of least resistance, and it leads to a spiritual dead end.
     Another problem is that truth and tradition have a tendency to become intermingled in our minds, and it is difficult to properly separate the two. For many, tradition is a source of security, something that is left unquestioned. However, true security should be in a never changing, all knowing, all powerful God, not our never changing traditions. And since truth is synonymous with God, when we focus on Him rather than on the externals of our traditional religion, truth becomes exceedingly more clear. Or as A.W. Tozer puts it so eloquently:

When religion has said its last word, there is little that we need other than God Himself. The evil habit of seeking God-and effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the and lies our great woe. If we omit the and we shall soon find God, and in Him we shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing.

     [A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God(Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton IL, 1982), p. 18.]

     This is not to say that tradition is all bad; religious Christianity is often better than no Christianity at all, as history makes clear. Debatably there may be something to be said for the stability that man-made traditions provides for some in the body of Christ. However, for those who seek reality rather then just religion, tradition should be something easily departed with for the sake of more effectively living and communicating truth.
 

The Subconscious Mind and Truth

     How can we break free from the confines of humanly devised religion? Such ideas have nothing to do with true spirituality, and are only misconceptions of Christianity that we have built in our minds.
     The scriptural passage that best speaks to this problem may be Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will. Some may not see being religious as conforming to the world, but it is in fact exactly that. Religious Christianity, in the form we have defined it here, takes truth and molds it into a narrow formula that drains it of power.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hallow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

     [Colossians 2:8  NIV]

      Renewing our minds is a must if we expect to be released from an incomplete and/or distorted view of reality. It is a process by which our subconscious minds are brought into alignment with Truth. This is not an easy, short, or simple development for most people in our modern society, but it will come to all those who seek it.
     Such renewal can only occur when we surrender our minds to the work of the Holy Spirit, not in a passive way, but instead asserting our will to understand and obey God's will. In addition, acknowledging our own human weakness and inability to discover wisdom on our own, realizing that we must first surrender to Gods purpose before true enlightenment and revelation can come.
     The importance of such mental transformation can not be stressed enough. Most modern Christians are weakened in their ability to influence those around them toward a Christian worldview because they have a pattern of thought processes that are cluttered with many distortions of reality. Until the body of Christ as a whole has the firm foundation of Truth on which to stand, it will remain ineffectual in its witness.
 

The Problem of Relativism

     One more thing we can do to prevent the problem of religiosity is to strongly oppose the popular belief that truth is relative. Once we become confident that truth is truth period, we will stop holding on to our security blankets of religious tradition with such passion, and begin seeking truth for truth's sake. Past statistics have shown that four out of ten people who call themselves evangelicals do not believe there is such a thing as absolute truth.* Those of us who do believe in absolutes are still greatly impacted by this pervasive view.

     *[Charisma and Christian Life Magazine, April, 1994 issue, p. 75.]

     Again we see that it is relativistic, secularistic concepts invading Christianity that leads to the same old tendencies we have discussed before. In this case the division of truth into categories; theological truth, political truth, scientific truth, etc. This is exactly what those who dismiss Christianity would hope our view to be. As long as we go about our task of defining the narrow modern view of theological truth only, rather than addressing the whole question of reality, then we are ineffectual in competing with those who hold modernist views, and thus are no threat to modernity.
     This is why when we become active on the political or scientific fronts we run into explosive and emotionally charged opposition. When Christians claims the same intellectual grounds that have for many decades been the free reign of non-theists, we are challenging the very basis of modern thinking. However, we often make the mistake of taking our religious preconceptions along on such endeavors and as a result destroy our credibility and limit our influence.
     Christians must begin to lay claim to the same intellectual areas the modernists have dominated for so long. We should state boldly that what we believe is not just another religion, but that it is a philosophy for defining reality that is unparalleled in depth, and reason. Then we must have good, powerful, and persuasive arguments to back such a claim up. We can no longer allow religious traditions to define who we are, we must rise to meet the challenge of modern thinking on the much broader level of reality definition. We must present a whole Gospel that covers the totality of life, not just the part of life that the modern mind perceives as religious. We must present what we believe to be the total and complete wide angled panorama of truth, and utterly forsake what has become a small and narrow snapshot of modern Christian religion. We must strike at the heart of the matter by challenging the very basis of modern thought and reason. Such approaches are absolutely essential if Christians are to gain more influence in a world that is increasingly being defined less in religious terms and more in scientific terms.

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