Wednesday: I Am Not Religious: I’m His
WEEK 5
WEDNESDAY
I AM NOT RELIGIOUS: I’M HIS
1 Timothy 3:16
We pondered yesterday the mastery of religious paraphernalia. An added word is needed. Religious rites and ceremonies and creeds and laying-on of hands may be useful—in their place. But their place is not in the list of essentials. Aids? Yes, but not essentials. If these rites and ceremonies and practices point beyond themselves to Christ, and push you in that direction, then good. But if they stop you at themselves as essential, then not good—idolatry.
Religion, which is to help you to Christ, often stands between you and Christ; you can’t see the person for the paraphernalia.
The fact is that Jesus never used the word religion, nor did the early disciples use it. Religion means literally “binding back”—a binding back to God. It is humanity’s attempts to bind ourselves back to God by various expedients. But the gospel was not a series of expedients to bind us back to God; it was the good news of God’s coming to us in incarnation, in redemption. Jesus didn’t come to set one religion against other religions—a little better, a little bit more moral. He came to set the good news over against human need, whether that need be found in this religion, that religion, or no religion. Religion is our search upward; the gospel is God’s reach downward. There are many religions; there is but one gospel.
What terms did Jesus use if he didn’t use the term religion? He used the “kingdom of God” and the “Way,” and both were embodied in himself: “I am the way.” All these terms are inward pushes toward the person Jesus and through him to God.
In the book Growing Spiritually, I gave the beginnings of the story of “Mary,” the simplest and the most spiritually profound person I’ve seen in East or West. Some psychiatrists, challenged and puzzled by her immediate insights and radiance, suggested that she ought to be psychoanalyzed. When I reported this to her, her reply was: “Why do they want to psychoanalyze me? I don’t know anything to psychoanalyze. Do they think I’m ‘off’ on religion? I’m not religious; I’m his.” Here she cut straight through paraphernalia to the person of Jesus. Life was simplified; she belonged to him.
O Lord, I thank you that I am now reduced to simplicity, I’m yours. That is central—all else marginal. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am emancipated from the many things to give myself to the One person of Christ.