Freedom from Addiction to Religion
Galatians 2:11 When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. 12 Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.
14 When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?
. . . . 19 For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
3 You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? . . . .
26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. . .
13 You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. 14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
A young lad was visiting a church for the first time, checking all the announcements and posters along the walls. When he came to a group of pictures of men in uniform, he asked a nearby usher, "Who are all those men in the pictures?" The usher replied, "Why, those are our boys who died in the service".
Dumbfounded, the youngster asked, "Was that the morning service or the evening service?"
Laws:
Some traditions say you have to pray at a particular time
The Bible says pray all the time (1 Thessalonians 5:17)
Some traditions say you are to repeat words over when you pray.
Jesus teaches we need to pray based on our relationship with God and with forgiveness in our hearts (Matthew 6:9-15)
Some say “You shall not eat this, you shall not eat that, ” or “you shall eat this, you shall eat that.”
The Bible says food is not the basis of our relationship with God. (God gives dietary restrictions in the Old Testament to save God’s people from diseases associated with improper foods improperly prepared, not to give them religious privilege).
Some say if you go out at particular times you’ll be accosted by demons
The Bible teaches that victory over demons is a given. Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. Jesus said “do not rejoice that the demons obey you, but that your names are written in heaven”. Luke 10:20
Some traditions teach that you should worship one demon to cast out others. Jesus said if demons fight demons, the powers of darkness are divided against themselves and a house divided cannot stand. Mark 3:23-26
Religion, for some, is like a chain that binds them to dates and times and seasons-some days are holy, some days are not. Others look at each day as holy. The Bible says we must not judge one another on such issues. Romans 14:5-8
7 Things that bring NO ADVANTAGE
1. There is no religious advantage to any diet – including being Veg. or having only fish on Friday, or avoiding chocolate for Lent, or any form of fast, even if it’s called a Daniel fast or a biblical fast
2. There is no religious advantage to race,
You have no spiritual advantage before God simply because you are Indian. Nor is there any advantage to being middle eastern, or African, or Western European.
3. There is no religious advantage to being a woman.
4. There is no religious advantage to being a man.
5. There is no religious advantage to being rich.
6. There is no religious advantage to being poor.
7. There is no religious advantage to following particular religious restrictions or practices, including orders of service, or wedding traditions, or what denomination you’re a part of (or not a part of) Galatians 3:26-28
In fact, if such religious observances become an excuse for dividing people it is the opposite of privilege before God.
Religion can actually hinder our relationship with God, and with other people-and I feel it usually does. God wants us, first and foremost, to love Him, and second, and foremost to love each other. If our religion becomes a basis for division and strife and hatred it becomes the opposite of a pathway to enlightenment or a means of relationship or Bhakti/devotion to God-it becomes a hindrance to true spirituality.
This was Peter’s great sin during his visit to Galatia. He separated from the Gentiles because he was afraid of the religious fervor of the Jews. He allowed religion to drive a wedge between himself and the Gentiles.
Illustration: -The Partition of India and Pakistan resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, from the Calcutta riots in 1946 to the immense tensions as more than seven million Muslims migrated from India to E. and W. Pakistan and more than seven million Hindus and Sikhs migrated from E. & W. Pakistan down to India. Muslims, with religious furvour, wanted to create a “pure land” (Paki-stan means pure land). As the Hindus and Sikhs left their territory the Muslims committed horrific crimes against them-murdering men, raping women, taking children, and, literally, dashing their heads against the stones. Radical Hindus and Sikhs felt cooperation with the Muslims was not possible, and a purely Hindu state was the best means of establishing a peaceful, prosperous nation. As the Muslims left India, the Hindus and Sikhs were guilty of horrific crimes against them-murdering men, raping women, taking children, and, literally, dashing their heads against the stones. According to the Pakistani government, more than 50,000 Muslim women were abducted by Hindus and Sikhs. According to the Indian government more than 30,000 Hindu and Sikh women were abducted by Muslims. Even ten years later only a fraction of these women from both sides had returned-many chose to stay where they were because the knew they would never be accepted back into their families after being so tainted. Religious fervor was the excuse on both sides for these atrocities.
Illustration: -Mahatma Gandhi embraced the principles of Ahimsa, and abhorred everything about the violence and division of partition. His final protest fast was intended to provide motivation for the cessation of hostilities on both sides. Knowing this a band of conspirators devised plots to kill him. Their first attempt (one of many murder attempts on Gandhi’s life) on January 20, 1948 was unsuccessful. The attempt January 30 achieved its desired goal. After receiving a final blessing from his guru, demonstrating his religious devotion, the murderer walked directly up to Gandhi at the end of evening prayers and fired three .38 caliber bullets from his handgun into Gandhi’s body. Gandhi died within 20 minutes.
Two days before he was killed, knowing there was a plot to take his life, Gandhi said this:
“If I am to die by the bullet of a mad man, I must do so smiling. There must be no anger within me. God must be in my heart and on my lips.”
Illustration: Unfortunately, we don’t have to go back many centuries to see similar evil in the Christian Church. Pope Urban II’s 1095 decree gave official church sanction to the atrocities of the Crusades.
And more recently (seeing that people didn’t learn from the horrors of the Crusades)
Conflicts immediately connected with the Reformation of the 1520s to 1540s:
The German Peasants' War (1524–1525), The battle of Kappel in Switzerland (1531) The Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) in the Holy Roman Empire, The Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) in the Low Countries, The French Wars of Religion (1562–1598), The Thirty Years War (1618–1648), affecting the Holy Roman Empire including Habsburg Austria and Bohemia, France, Denmark and Sweden, The Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1651), affecting England, Scotland and Ireland (Wikipedia)
Each of these conflicts saw Catholic Christians committing atrocities against Protestant Christians and Protestant Christians committing atrocities against Catholic Christians based, supposedly, on religious fervor. There seems to be no end to our human capacity to not learn from history. As Albert Einstein said
Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity. And I’m not sure about the universe.
There is NO ADVANTAGE to such religion. In fact, it can be one of the most destructive forces on earth.
There is, however, every advantage in these four things:
1. The Truth
Illustration: I was talking with a man this week who believes that the baptism of the Spirit of God is merely the cundalini Shakti rising to the 7th Chakra. Aside from being patently weird, this is simply not true. The Spirit of God coming on us is not a process of our own power or spirit-in fact it is the opposite.
Illustration: Again, this week (this is the week for interesting conversations) a lady who is going through a divorce with an abusive husband enlisted the assistance of a lawyer. The lawyer prepared a brief in which he said the husband not only physically abused her, but that he was bi-sexual, and that his father was a sexual deviant, and the husband was trying to force the wife to have sex with his father. None of this was true, but the lawyer felt she would have a stronger case if she lied. She refused to sign the brief. To her credit she was unwilling to embrace a lie in order to get some benefit. Lying never gains us privilege before God, in fact we will never know His help and blessing unless we are willing to turn our backs on all falsehood. There is no advantage to embracing lies for any reason. Lies are completely contrary to the Gospel and Spirit of Jesus Christ. Jesus is truth. His Word is truth. We must be people of truth.
2. The Gospel It’s good news! God so loved the world that He gave His only begotton Son, that ANYONE who believes in Him should not die, but have age abiding life. Religion is NOT good news-if you do this, and don’t do that (and no one can manage to not do the don’ts and do the do’s) you’ll be enlightened or achieve nothingness, or enter the highest heaven, or whatever. Good news is God has already done what we cannot do, and He is willing to work with and in us to accomplish more than we can without Him.
3. The Faith, Believing there are a few loud voices today saying faith in God is like believing in elves and fairies. The Bible says without faith it is impossible to please God. Galatians 2:16, Hebrews 11:6
4. The Spirit One logical question which might arise from this discussion is whether or not God expects anything of us-whether there is such a thing as a form of righteousness which is genuinely spiritual, or whether faith has simply replaced right behavior.
Illustration. Years ago, during the age of the hippie movement in the early seventies in the US, three hippie friends were sitting at a restaurant having lunch. All of them went to church. One of them was spoke with language seasoned with a sour collection of expletives-foul language. One of the men was shaking his head, “oh! Brother, Oh, brother . . .” he muttered while his friend sputtered on. Finally he couldn’t sit silently any longer and said “O! Brother, you can’t expect the Holy Spirit to hang around when you have so much garbage coming out of your mouth!” I think he was right. And the presence of God’s Spirit in your heart is a powerful motivator to right-when we are not right, He allows us to experience a loss of peace-a sense of His absence (though He is never far from us). That sense of distance is devastating to someone who is accustomed to peace in the Spirit.
A religious spirit is the opposite.
We want God around when we are afraid, or when we need healing, or when we’ve met the end of our means or intelligence or resources. That kind of attitude puts us in a religious relationship with God-where we seek God through whatever means when we are under stress, trying to placate or motivate Him to our side.
God wants to live in us, to give us victory over sin, to transform us from the inside out, then to use us as instruments of victory in the lives of others. We really can’t bring victory to others until we have experienced victory in ourselves. We cannot be the subjects of freedom until we ourselves are free. Freedom from religion is only the beginning. Freedom to do good comes next.
That, however, is the subject for another message: next week, What the Bible says about Addiction to Sin.
