Religion

Religion has a bad name. Nowhere is this more evident than within the church. I think this is wrong though and I'm going to try to explain why.

Religion is simply the symbol and metaphor we use to relate to God. It's the way we do things, the form of our worship. It's the style we have and as such is completely unavoidable. The problem comes with our use of religion, not with religion per se. Too often we have treated religion as the end rather than the means. We have settled for the style rather than the substance. This is the beginning of all idolatry, but we are arrogant to think that we can avoid this simply by deconstructing the old way of doing things. We need some form of religion to allow us to express our love to God.

There is no such thing as an 'irreligious church', despite the protestations of many a pastor. In fact, seeking to be an 'irreligious church' is a potentially dangerous pursuit. How can we be sure we won't throw the baby (Jesus!) out with the bath water? What makes us think we know more about God than those that have gone before? Many churches believe that the way to be radical is to do away with tradition and religion. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The word radical comes from the latin word 'radix', which means roots. So the only really radical people are those who recognise their roots and traditions. We need to love our traditions to become the radicals we want to be, although of course we must mould, shape and re-interpret them too. Merely throwing them out of the door won't do though. It is intellectually lazy and arrogant in the extreme. It is the child who rebels the hardest who often most closely represents his parents in the end.

Let us be a church which learns to take the narrow road of re-interpretation rather than the wide road of deconstruction, where everything old becomes evil. Let us learn that we cannot avoid being religious or traditional and nor should we want to. Let us also never settle for the means rather than the end, which is God himself.