I don’t like pushy, the quickest way to get me to leave is to be pushy. I don’t like it, and my husband doesn’t like it either she said very matter-of-factly. She then smiled and said she was pleasantly surprised when she had visited our church, we had been anything but. This woman had visited our church a few weeks back, and had come to the prayer room with Sou, the woman I wrote about who had immigrated from Egypt.
I had bumped into her in Wal-Mart as I stopped in to grab some batteries. She herself had immigrated from Romania, where religion to her had been a very strict Catholic background. She told me that because of her religious upbringing, her and her husband were not really “church people”. They believed in God, but religion had left them with a sour taste in their mouth, so they had chosen to love God privately from the safety and comfort of their own home.
Now Sou, who is an on fire follower of Christ, a Coptic Christian from Cairo (tongue twister alert) had befriended this woman and her family. She asked and asked and asked until the woman had finally given in and come to church. She was afraid that Sou was actually starting to get mad at her, and she valued Sou’s friendship, so she had gone. It was everything she had not expected, it was warm, friendly and non-pretentious. She was pleased and would definitely be back, she had seen God’s love, yet not seen religion.
Later in the day, I found myself hearing a similar message from someone else altogether. That morning, I had dropped my wife’s Jeep off at the shop for some work. As the young man shuttled me back home we talked comfortably as he told me his story, where he was from, why he was here, where he was going. He had come here to attend school, and he had graduated a month ago. He was thirty and had a four-year-old daughter that lived with her mother on the east coast, where he planned on going now that school was over, he missed her terribly.
On the return trip I asked him if he was a Christian, and he too said he believed in God, loved and prayed to God, yet wasn’t a churchy guy. When he was young, he had gained great respect for his parents. His mother was the sole support for the family, because his father was injured and became fully paralyzed, a quadriplegic. His mom worked her fingers to the bone, holding down two jobs to make ends meet and feed her family. She also cared for her husband in his fully dependant state, lovingly caring for the wounded love of her youth until he passed away. This young mans throat gets tight when he talks of his mother and how much she means to him, the sacrifices she made for him. I don’t think it would be possible for him to hold her with higher regard than he does.
He then recalls how his mom, wanting to do right by her family got her boys up on Sunday morning and began taking them to church. They went for a while and then she indicated to the church leadership that she would like to place membership with them. She had not had a church family in a long time, but she wanted to come back home, she wanted to set a good example for her boys. The church leadership then gave her their terms, if she wanted to be a member, she needed to pledge a certain percentage of her income, and faithfully keep up with her commitment. She explained to them that she was working two jobs, and that her husband was disabled, she was the sole support and there just wasn’t that much money at the time, they were barely making it. Could they not make an exception just this once? They told her that rules were rules, and that if she wasn’t willing to commit, her heart wasn’t right. She begged them, please, for my son’s sake, I want my boys to know God, I want them to have a church home, please!. The answer remained no, pay up or move on.
As we pulled into the shop, and the conversation neared the end, he explained that he loved God, but just wasn’t much into religion, looking to me I had to agree, I did understand.
I still invited him to church, he took my number and said He would call me, I hope he does. As I drove home, I thought about religion, and what the word represents to me. When I think of religion, I think of tradition, I think of the Pharisees that were always trying to trip up my Savior. I think of how they tried to trick Him, how they were so pious that when faced with the Son of the creator of the world, their own arrogance blinded them to the truth, that the Messiah they had waited for stood before them. In the NIV version of the Bible, the word “religion” is mentioned five times, give or take a few depending on what translation you are reading. I find it interesting that in two of the five, the scriptures are linking the word with the Pharisees. It would seem to me that religion is of man, and I believe if Jesus had been in that van with us, He would have shed a tear at the young mans story. Had Jesus been in Wal-Mart with me this morning, I believe He would have had compassion with the woman from Romania. I believe He would have sympathized with her, explained that He too had been hurt by the religious. I believe He would have held her as kindred.
So the question I have is this, does Jesus get lost in tradition where we are? Do we turn people away because they don’t look like us, because they don’t hold to our traditions. Are our traditions from God, or are they from us, because they make us feel holy and righteous, and if that is why we feel righteous, then of what value is the “Blood of the Lamb”?
God Bless-JFT
Wonderful questions. Here are a few ideas I have been knocking around
http://darcydowning.wordpress.com/
Please stop by, I enjoyed your blog.
Darcy,
Thank you, I am glad you were blessed. I have read some on your site, and am equally blessed. I have never read your blog before, but I will be subscribing. God Bless-Jim
“… does Jesus get lost in tradition where we are?…”
The big sin of the Pharisees was not their hypocrisy – aren’t we all hypocrites in some way or another – but it was in their oral traditions which they allowed to take preeminence over the Word.
Are we like the Pharisees with our own traditions? Of course, we are. We need the Holy Spirit to open our eyes so that we can flee our traditions. This will take some time.
Yes, Larry, again you nailed it. It amazes me that you can nail in a paragraph what I try to and fall short of in a thousand words. We are hypocrites just like every other generation of followers of Christ before us. I don’t believe we will ever flee tradition completely, it is in our nature. But by living by the Spirit, our eyes “will” be opened and we will have love and compassion, rather than lay judgment. I don’t think anything could hurt God more than for us to alienate (with religion) those who would seek to know Him. Those who “don’t”yet know Him associate religion with God, and therefore think God is shunning them. This breaks my heart, because it could not be further from the truth. Thanks Larry!
God Bless-Jim
I really appreciate your thoughts and posts and your reply to Larry . . .and those questions. (and I appreciate Larry’s comments too! 🙂 ) It is heartbreaking. Just thinking out loud here . . .maybe this is about us, the people, being “church” more than the organized church. Not that all organized churches are alienating and shunning people, but we each know of someone who has experienced these things.
I read about how the Pharisees started out and since then, I have a different view of them. I understand a little more. They were trying to hold onto God, to not let those laws get forgotten. It just morphed into something else, something more of man than God.
God bless you and yours, and the ways you reach out in His name, not in the name of religion.
Thanks Deb,
I am glad it blessed you. It breaks my heart that there are so many people out there who are wounded, and rather than the world wounding them, it was the church. We should be providing comfort to them, loving on them. I think the church is changing, I think in many ways we know our mistakes and are struggling to change things for the better. It is almost as though I see a revival going on in todays church, and I like it. Anyway, thanks and God Bless-Jim