Not so long ago, an agnostic family member kept pressing me with ‘side-long’ comments like, “So, how are things in the world of the religious?” or “What’s up with the religious fold today?” And “How’d your time with the ranks of the religious go this fine Sunday?” I let the comments pass. In small part, I let the comments pass in order to avoid a pointless conflict. In large part, I let the comments pass because I had recently become confused about the term “religion.” In one instance, I had heard a pastor I respect talking about the apologetic value of recognizing that all people are essentially religious, and that we can use this to demonstrate one’s need for real and true religion – the Christian faith. In another instance, at a church planting assessment and training I was taught to avoid the term religion by insisting and showing that Christianity is a relationship as opposed to a religion. On top of these two instances, in my college comparative religions class I was taught that the term ‘religion’ was originally an exclusively Christian term. Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, or Taoists don’t have an equivalent term for the Christian term ‘religion’ (the Buddhist or Hindu term ‘yoga’ is the closest equivalent referring to a particular spiritual way or path that a person follows). And, until recent history, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Taoists, et al didn’t us the western term ‘religion’.
So, here’s the question, “Am I religious?” What about all the people who I worshiped with this morning in church, are they too religious? Well, let me put it this way: yes, no, maybe so.
IN ONE SENSE, YES I AM RELIGIOUS
In one sense, all people are religious. And, I am no different than anyone else. The word religion comes to us in part from the Latin religāre which means to tie, fasten, or bind. In this sense, religion refers to our attempt to connect ourselves to something that will give us some sort of ultimate value that is greater than ourselves. The problem is that we end up trying in vain to bind ourselves to things which don’t give us ultimate value beyond ourselves. We try to get ultimate meaning from our career, and we end up tied down to our jobs. We try to get ultimate meaning from our kids, and we end bound to their every whim. We try to get ultimate meaning from nice things and stuff, and we end up lashed to the weight of materialism. We try to get ultimate meaning from relationships, and we end up tangled in the knots of personal conflict. Ironically, we even try to find ultimate meaning in ‘religion’, and we find ourselves bound up in an endless series of performance-driven, pious, pharisaical practices (i.e. pray more, read more, serve more, sacrifice more, and etc.). We hope to tie ourselves to something that will buoy our lives; instead, we bind ourselves to a weight that drowns us in the sea of life. So, in that sense, as a fallen sinful human being, I am religious. Too often I find myself bound up in the tangle mess of life (a tangled mess of my own making); I desperately need to be freed from this bondage. Don’t we all?
IN ANOTHER SENSE, NO I AM NOT RELIGIOUS
As a Christian, Jesus Christ has released me from the tangled bondage of my sinful life. Because of my relationship with Jesus Christ, I am freed from trying to earn my value through things, stuff, or people; my life’s value and worth are in Christ Jesus. And, I don’t have to work at an endless series of performance-driven, pious, pharisaical practices in order to earn my place with Jesus Christ. By grace I have been granted a relationship with Jesus Christ. By grace I have been reconciled to God. By grace I have been adopted by the Heavenly Father. By grace I have fellowship with the Holy Spirit. In this sense I am not religious. I don’t spend my days trying to bind myself to God. God has bound himself to me in an everlasting relationship of his making, and I can rest in the grace of that relationship as opposed to frantically running after a relationship.
IN AN ULTIMATE SENSE, I GUESS I AM RELIGIOUS
With all that talk of a relationship with God that transcends our attempts at trying to bind ourselves to something of ultimate value, in our relationship to God, God still binds himself to us. In that sense, I guess I’m religious. The term ‘religious’ has its primary root in the Latin word religiō, which could well be translated into ‘re-ligament’. The shift in the Latin from religāre to religiō is telling. Whereas religāre implies a cold matter-of-fact binding, tying, or lashing; by contrast, religiō implies a living, organic, relational, bodily bond. The former is lifeless and impersonal; the latter is living, personal, and relational. As the parts of a body are ligamented together in living unity, so too we as Christians are ligamented together by the bond of the Holy Spirit into the Body of Christ with Christ as our head (Rom. 12:3—ff; I Cor. 12; Eph. 1:22—23; 4:25; 5:30; Col. 1:24). We are bound to Christ as living branches grafted onto a living vine (Jn. 15:1—8). We are bound to Christ as the marriage bond unites bride and groom (Rev. 21:2—ff). We are bound to Christ as friend to friend (Jn. —17). Through the bond of adoption we are the children of God, co-heirs with Christ (I Jn. 3:1—ff). Once we had been severed from God, now we are re-ligamented together into the Body of Christ (Eph. —23). In this sense I am most definitely religious.
It’s not that we attempt to tie ourselves to God through good works and self-righteousness – this is religiosity or false religion. It is God who binds himself to us – this is re-ligamentation or true religion. What makes religion in the sense of re-ligamentation so beautiful, meaningful, hopeful, uplifting, and motivating is that we can give up laboring to build ourselves into a feeble, fragile, false façade. Jesus Christ re-ligaments us into his body. And, those who are re-ligamented into the Body of Christ will never be separated or amputated from the Body of Christ. The Apostle Paul writes:
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38—39
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