Our Stories
Keep On Losing Our Religion
By Abigail Welborn | posted 08/05/2010
"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." (James 1:27 NIV)
Did you hear? Anne Rice, the vampire novelist who famously converted to Christianity a few years ago, is quitting. Well, she's quitting "Christianity"; she was quick to clarify that her relationship with Christ is still going strong, and for that I'm thankful. She found, as have many others, that Christians are imperfect just like everyone else, only maybe a little more resistant to change. In short, she found that many Christ-followers are hung up on religion.
I remember being in college when, for the first time, I met a Christian who was a Democrat. (Yeah, sheltered Midwestern upbringing, what can I say?) I was honestly surprised that it was possible. Fortunately she was a friendly person, and I learned a lot about her heart for helping the poor and marginalized and how that affected her political ideology. She opened my eyes to how much I had associated my faith with something that is really unrelated.
A few weeks ago Doug talked about losing "religion" as we know it and embracing the true, pure Gospel. That starts with internalizing the fact that God accepts you - period. Then, knowing what Jesus sacrificed for us, we ask ourselves, How should we live? True Gospel stops paying attention to the trappings of religion - what you eat, how you dress, where and when you congregate with other believers - and instead focuses on loving God and loving people (a phrase that should sound familiar to you by now!).
As we see in James 1:27, true religion has nothing to do with the external and everything to do with the way we treat other people and interact with the world. Do we love the poor by helping them? Do we influence non-believers for the good, or do we let them talk us down? I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to non-Christians, I'm saying you should stand firm in your convictions - and make sure that your convictions are truly based on God's Word, not the religion you grew up in. Otherwise you become like people who drove Ms. Rice away from the Church, who placed too much importance on non-essential things.
Now, I'm also not going to let Ms. Rice off the hook completely. I'm certain that joining an insular group of Christians from a particular culture of the Church could not have been easy, given that they likely held many beliefs more conservative than hers. But part of the responsibility we have in loving others is to love those within the Church. We're all adopted children of God (Eph. 1:5), and like any family, we don't get to choose who else is in. Also like many families, there may be some people with whom you're just never going to get along. You don't have to hang out with them all the time, but you do have to love them.
Even though R.E.M. week in our Summer of Rock is past, don't forget that losing your religion is something we all have to strive to do better. It won't happen overnight, but I hope that we can create a place where outsiders feel welcome and loved, even when we don't see eye to eye.
Abigail can be reached via email here.
