Relationship Over Religion
Like any good novel, the Bible has scenes which develop and unfold. It has villains and villainesses, heroes and heroines — many different characters. It builds into the climax, and it even has a denouement. It takes place over thousands of years — way longer than “War and Peace.” The Library should categorize it in the Non-fiction section, but as the modern intellectual thinking attests the Bible, like all other religious books, is more fable than fact, fantasy rather than fantastic, hysterics, not history… My experience convinces me otherwise. God exists, and He has rescued me from perilous situations and rewarded me n a great variety of ways, because I seek Him in earnest. God exists, and if you diligently seek Him, He will find you. It’s not some delusion or illusion my brain has cooked up in reaction to some personal trauma, nor does it originate from indoctrinated beliefs. In the court of public opinion, I testify to its truth. God is. He wants to adopt you, to be a member of His family, not just a member of a religious denomination. God loves you. Why won’t you let Him?
Let me try to give an answer to that question… Since childhood, we have been indoctrinated to believe certain things. Parents have modeled certain behaviors. Even genetics have something to do with our personalities. So what has developed through all the divergent cultures is a petri dish of a whole range of persuasions, from agnosticism to asceticism, socio-political cliques to reclusive minimalists, intellectualism to conspiracy theory… and so on. Our brains have absorbed and adhere to all kinds of concepts or we have collected, sorted, and built bits and pieces of a thousand piece puzzle into a labyrinth of our very own, a foundation, a dark basement we rarely visit after the rest of the house is built. It doesn’t even matter if the pieces don’t fit together or the blueprint makes no sense, because we simply bash the pieces together with our fists and hammers in order to make them fit.
Religion is mostly like that, a mishmash of doctrines and assumptions we never really think about. I classify all philosophies as Religion; all pursuits as Religion; all hobbies, vocations, and sports fanaticism as Religion; and of course, all religions as Religion. They all can be pursued religiously and faithfully, or they can be pursued casually and sporadically. No matter.
I contend that the Bible requires something a bit different. The Bible requires a change of mind and pursuing a way of life. There is an intellectual discipline as well as a transcendence and transformation. No “blind faith,” but revelatory reward, truly experienced, with pragmatic wisdom, all applicable to living in the current world, the present, not the past
The Bible is a history, spiritual, factual, not contrary to science, but resisting Science as a religious pursuit. Science can search out and prove the mechanics of the event of Creation, but it falls far short for an answer to why Creation was initiated. Has the Universe always existed in some ultra super compressed form that inexplicitly exploded? And did that explosion result in an ordered universe with that order defined in the laws of physics? Did that vast explosion actually form all types of molecules? Did that subatomic explosion form genetical life, forming the whole menagerie of living things, including mankind, who learned to build things as well as to blow things up, to both nurture life and to destroy it? Ahh. It seems to me that Science masquerading as Religion takes a whole lot more of blind faith while its proponents and adherents always mock religions with smug abandon.
Notwithstanding all this rigmarole, the Bible points to a history ripe with lessons for life. It doesn’t shy away from humanity’s failures nor the personal short comings of its heroes and protagonists. The stories are not fables and do not attempt to whitewash biographies. Nevertheless, they are written for our benefit, for our learning, for all of us to consider and to discover a personal relationship with the living God. The key is that relationship — not a membership in a religion of any denomination or sect or cause — no matter how noble it may seem to be. It insists on relationship over religion.
The God of the Bible wants to give a gift to you. It is a gift with no strings attached, no way to earn it, and no amount of money can purchase it. Friendship cannot be bought and there is no “stairway to heaven.” However, “there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.” Choose relationship over religion. God loves you (from the Greek, agape) even if you are not very lovable. Love one another(from the Greek, philia), love one another as brothers and sisters, even if you’re not.
