Religion is about allowing someone else to create your relationship with God and then to tell you how to live your life, which then gives you someone else to blame when it doesn't work out the way you want. Spirituality is about knowing God personally, knowing yourself and then choosing to live accountably.
In her words, she seems to be identifying the word "Religion" with the institutional church. This person isn't alone. The institutional church has found it more and more difficult to make a connection with people of our era. Why? Maybe because we have started to question the role of the institution in our faith. It's a valid question and one that, I believe, needs to be asked. What role does the church and the bible play in our personal relationship with God?
I think that the question stems from a rising tide of people who don't find what they need inside the walls of a church. Myself included, I find my relationship with God has at times been actually inhibited by my involvement in the institutional church because I have found stringent rules, regulations, and expectations of behavior restrict me. My exit from it came when I started our ministry several years ago and created our own form of church at the facilities where we go. It has been more rewarding than any other church experience that I have had and my relationship with Christ has been strengthened through the process of bringing it to others. I wish everyone could have that experience.
I think that where I differ is that I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I want that opportunity for those who need it and I hope for the day when I find a place to hang my own hat, metaphorically speaking. Still, until God moves me and my family in another direction, here I will be on the outside.
Lately, I have begun to question whether membership with a church is a necessity. I have found that when I become involved with a church my focus changes. It changes from one who is focused on people wherever I am to being focused on the activities of those within the church body. It is a truth that most church bodies are involved in the building of their own infrastructures. For this reason, people within those bodies stop serving the greater community and begin to pour their hearts into their church body's needs. To me, that is an obstacle to growth for the church body and for me.
Ultimately, our walk of faith is to gain a personal relationship with God. If it takes a healthy relationship with a church body to get us there, then maybe that is where we need to be, but the same can be said for the opposite as well. Beyond that relationship with God, our faith should also put us into action of some kind. It should cause us to desire to make the world a better place. If our faith isn't doing that, then it isn't enough.
Our faith needs to be something that we do and not just something that we think about. It's more than a nice, warmy feeling that we experience when we are communing with God, but also a way of living, a way of loving, and a way being. That's why, whether we are inside or outside of our church bodies, we need to be engaged in our world and our community in a way that it changes us and it changes our world. When we are engaged in the beauty of God's handiwork in the world, we move into a position where we are fulfilling the purpose that God has created for us.
I'm glad that my friend posted her little two cents on the board. It inspired me and several others to think about the real priorities of our faith. Faith isn't about where we worship or who we worship with. It's about who we worship and why and what that worship does to make us better.
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