Archive for August, 2009
End of Religion Part 2
August 29th, 2009. Published under religion, thoughts and questions. No Comments.
Another great point Bruxy Cavey makes centers around the fact that Jesus is the Word become flesh. John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
This is a defining characteristic of Christianity. Only in Christianity does God’s revelation come in a person. In Judaism and Islam, Moses and Muhammad received revelations from God, but they themselves weren’t the revelation, it was the words they wrote down in the Torah and Qur’an. Even Buddha as a person is not the revelation, it is his teachings that disclose the path to enlightenment and compassion. But for Christ-followers, the revelation is a person.
Jesus said I am the truth. Follow me. Trust me. Come to me. Cavey says, “The implication is important. Reading, studying, and understanding the Bible is not the goal of a Christ-follower. Bible knowledge is just a first step toward the goal of following Jesus. According to Thomas Adams, ‘The Bible is to us what the star was to the wise men; but if we spend all our time in gazing upon it, observing its motions, and admiring its splendor, without being led to Christ by it, the use of it will be lost on us.’”
I think this distinction is important. So many times we have “Bible studies” with the focus of learning and gaining a deeper understanding of the original meanings of what was written. But we are to be reading and studying the Bible for the specific purpose of growing closer to Christ, the living Word, the Holy Spirit. I once mentioned to a mentor of mine my desire to start a Bible study and his response shocked me. He said, Yuck, Bible study? Why would you want to study it? If you see a girl across the room and you analyze or study her, you see that she has brown hair, she’s five foot whatever… Why would you want to analyze her? Go over and talk to her and engage, but don’t study her from afar. The same way with the Bible, don’t study it, engage it and live it, the Word is Jesus and he’s active and waiting to do life with you. Now obviously he was just trying to make a point, he is a big advocate for reading the Scriptures. But at the heart of the issue, why are we reading? To learn and have more knowledge about God and Jesus? Or to participate in an active life with Jesus?
William Barclays writes:
There was one mistake into which the early Church was never in any danger of falling. In those early days men never thought of Jesus Christ as a figure in a book. They never thought of Him as someone who had lived and died, and whose story was told and passed down in history, as the story of someone who had lived and whose life had ended. They did not think of Him as someone who had been but as someone who is. They did not think of Jesus Christ as someone whose teaching must be discussed and debated and argued about; they thought of Him as someone whose presence could be enjoyed and whose constant fellowship could be experienced. Their faith was not founded on a book; their faith was founded on a person.
Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t read the Bible, because the Bible points the way to Jesus. I am saying we should follow Jesus and not the Bible. We still read the Bible, but Jesus is our goal. And if that is true, it will radically change the way we read, interpret and apply the Bible. Jesus always taught that the Hebrew Scriptures, the Bible of his day, always pointed to Him. Twice in Luke 24 it says Jesus explained to them what was said about him in the Scriptures and he opened their minds to understand.
Cavey says, “So God’s written Word is not a substitute for the Word made flesh, Immanuel, “God with us”. God’s precepts are not a substitute for God’s Spirit who continues to be God with us and within us.”
The Bible is like a treasure map with the treasure being Jesus. But we often treat the treasure map as though it’s the treasure itself and when we do this we miss the treasure completely. To the religious people who did this Jesus says, “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life” (John 5:39-40)
The End of Religion
August 23rd, 2009. Published under religion, thoughts and questions. 2 Comments.
I’m currently reading The End of Religion by Bruxy Cavey. This book is amazing. The premise of the book is that Jesus never intended to found a new religion; he hoped to break down the very idea of religion as a way to God. He says, “The primary mission of Jesus was to tear down religion as the foundation for people’s connection with God and to replace it with himself – the Divine coming to us in our own context and our own form. This is what Jesus called “the kingdom of God.” It is God and his people, living together the way he originally intended.”
Jesus completely broke down and turned upside down the religion that God set up, Judaism. He came as a “fulfillment” of the law. The Jewish religion told people that you had to do A, B, C and then D in order to be forgiven of sins, to pray, to be “clean” etc. But Jesus came and proclaimed something entirely different. He said anyone can pray, anywhere. He forgave sins in the middle of someone’s house or on the roadside. You didn’t have to go to the Temple and offer a sacrifice to be forgiven. He completely shattered the religion. He subverted virtually all of the traditions and widely held beliefs of his day, and completely dissed the religious scholars and leaders. These were people considered closest to God. In Mark 7:6-9 he says,
“Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
‘These people honor me with their lips,
But their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
Their teachings are but rules taught by men.’
You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men. You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!”
I think Jesus’ rebukes of religion apply just as much to present-day Christianity as it did to ancient Judaism. We honor Him with our lips, but our hearts are far from him. We obey our tradition and rules over Jesus. We worship Christianity, not Jesus. To be a follower of Jesus you don’t have to go to a church building every Sunday morning, say the “sinner’s prayer”, be baptized by a pastor, speak in tongues, never speak in tongues, vote a certain way or obey any of the other rules we’ve set up. The early Church never built buildings for themselves or had a “sinner’s prayer” to pray in order to be a follower of Christ. They just simply did what Jesus said; they subverted the religion of their day and were outsiders to religion.
In the book he says:
“By saying something as audacious as “I am the way” (John 14:6) to his disciples, Jesus fundamentally challenged all of the how-to-systems of the spiritual world. The way is not the Ten Commandments, the Eightfold Path, the Four Noble Truths, the Five Pillars of Action, the Six Articles of Belief, the Seven Sacraments, or any other of the systems of salvation stewarded by the religions of our planet. God himself is the way. He has come to earth to share this message, to show us his love, and to shut down religion once and for all. We can embrace this and the freedom it brings, or we can cling to our religious systems for the comfort and security they bring. But we cannot do both.”
There are good things about tradition and the rules we create, and he talks about it in the book. But the point is Christians generally worship Christianity and the comforts it brings. If we box ourselves in and obey certain rules and interpret the words of Jesus in a way that fits inside of that box, we’re safe, we’re Christian and we’re going to heaven. I don’t think Jesus intended us to do that, and I don’t think we’re safe. If anything we should interpret them with a historical context, looking at what he said and did in terms of the norms of his day. Then he becomes even more scandalous and subversive than we’d ever like to believe. I don’t think many people like it when Jesus said many people would call him Lord, Lord but he would reject them, saying he never knew them. I think he was serious when he said “Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
Sorry if this has a critical tone to it, I usually try not to be critical. But this is a critique from the inside. I was raised a Christian. As I have examined my faith, I’ve seen how my whole life, while proclaiming to believe and put my trust in Jesus, I’ve really put my faith in the religion that bares his name. Jesus was not safe, he was not a conformist. He was subversive and created scandals.
Now I’m only giving a cursory glance at something he dedicates 200+ pages to, so I highly recommend you read the book.
Trials and tribulations
August 20th, 2009. Published under Life in Uganda, thoughts and questions. No Comments.