Why God Doesn't Hate Religion

There is a propensity within evangelicalism to claim that "religion" is bad but that a "relationship" with God is good. Religion, as it is used here, implies cold rigidity, self-centeredness, and formulas. It can be accomplished in rote with little feeling or purpose. Relationship implies vitality, purpose, love, and meaning without Pharisaical methodology.

This is, I think, a false dichotomy, and I argue that the distinction is not between religion and relationship but between good religion and bad religion. Disregarding religion altogether is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

(In the attached video clip, Jefferson Bethke illustrates this tendency of evangelicals to condemn religion generally. This video quickly went viral on Youtube, because it struck a nerve with so many people-both positively and negatively.) 

John Calvin called humans homo religioso or religious man. In the animal kingdom, religiosity is one of the key factors that sets homo sapien apart from the other animal creatures. Humans are inherently and incurably religious. It is notable that there are no societies that were or are atheistic. [1] Even in the absence of God's special revelation through Jesus or the Scriptures, humans have still invented religious narratives. In Rome, Greece, and Egypt, it was mythological polytheism. In Africa and the Americas, the natives practiced forms of animism and ancestor worship. In the east, human beings have been cosmic Buddhists, polytheistic Hindus, or various other forms of pantheism. In the absence of the knowledge of Yahweh, humans will worship the stars, the sun, sea creatures, cows, and mountains. Or they'll deify all of Gaia itself. This is why Calvin wrote, "the human mind is a perpetual factory of idols." [2] The point is, outside of modern universities, there just have not been many atheists. Why? Because God created man to be religious. Expecting humans to not be religious is like expecting a Corvette to not be fast.

This article illustrates the same anti-"religion" impulse.

This God-designed trait in human beings works its way out systematically in the form of religion, and religion may be either true or false. [3] True Christian religion ought to be one whose central tenets are love of God and love of neighbor. It is Christ-centered, Gospel-focused, others-serving, and Scripture-based. It is obedient to God and sacrificial to others. It loves orphans, widows, prostitutes, the poor, and the marginalized.

For all of its merits, evangelicalism has over-emphasized the individual at the expense of the universal Church. The Christian life has become about one's own relationship with God, rather than the whole Church's relationship with God. The Bible certainly points to the necessity of the individual to love God and be "born again," (John 3:3) but the Church is also called the "Bride of Christ," a term, which is collective for the Church as a whole. (2 Cor. 11:2-3; Eph. 5:22ff; Rev. 19:6-10; Rev. 21:9-27) The "flock," the "building," the "bride," the "body," the "branch," and the "preisthood" are all collective similes for the Church, which illustrate the fact that God cares greatly for the whole institution, not just its individual members. Many have long neglected the covenant community of the Church with whom God commands us to worship, love, edify, carry out discipline, practice baptism, share communion, and give our offerings. There is a certain level of religious formula and ritual (religion) in the faithful Christian life that cannot and should not be neglected.

Of course the formulaic nature can be abused and become lifeless, but that is bad religion. Again, as James wrote, "faith without works is dead." (James 2:20, KJV) Dead, false, or bad religion is a problem. Good religion follows the formula without neglecting things like love, truth, sacrifice, and spiritual affection. Saying that religion and relationship are antithetical is an oversimplification. I credit certain evangelical leaders (e.g. Jefferson Bethke) for trying to lead us to the cure--a genuine spiritual life--but I don't think the diagnosis was entirely accurate.

In my theological study at Wheaton College Graduate School, I learned to think of the religious rituals (and even formal liturgy) in a new way.

Religious practice is like sex

Dr. George Kalantzis, my professor of ancient theology at Wheaton College (IL), once compared the sacraments (communion and baptism) to sex. For people like me this statement carried great shock value. Where could he possibly be going with this? He semi-jokingly stated that young people get married to have sex (at least they should wait until marriage) and then they have sex to stay married. His point was that sex is designed by God to deepen the relational bond between married people. While initially newly married couples focus on the act in and of itself, there ought to be a change of focus to the purpose behind it. When sex is no longer novel, it would be a huge mistake to stop doing it; otherwise, the reason for it--the deepening of the marriage bond--is lost. From a Christian perspective, a marriage without sex is not a good marriage. This is why marriage counselors will often encourage troubled married couples to make an effort toward physical connection even when they don't feel like it. The formality has a way deepening the relationship and becoming more than mere formality. Religious practices (baptism, communion, liturgy, prayer, worship, and giving a tithe) can have the same effect, I think. 

Immature young people drop out of church life during college because it ceases to be fun and novel for them. (Coincidentally, this is often the same reason people get divorces.) The mature minority stick it out and continue to practice the "religion" and, in time, they find that their hearts are softened and the formality becomes genuine relationship. If we only practiced faith when we felt like we had a deep relationship with the Lord, there would likely be very little to the Christian life for most of us. 

Religion values the whole community, past and present

By trying to be relational, many well-meaning evangelical leaders are trying to communicate the Gospel to young people. Ironically, however, this runs the risk of alienating an entire generation of Christians who long to be connected to something historic. The strong restorationist impulse of evangelicals has given the impression that the only church history that matters is that found in the early Church and in a small number of Christians since then (Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and maybe Edwards). And, these few historical voices are usually used as little more than a foil against Catholicism. In particular, young people born since 1980 or 1990 seem to crave historical connection, and they have rejected the historical isolationism of their parents.

Feeling like they have no other options many young evangelicals have left for confessional churches, such as Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and Presbyterian denominations. Others have jumped off the Protestant ship altogether and embraced Catholicism. They don't know what to do with the seven sacraments, priestly celibacy, Mariology, or papal authority, but they are willing to live with the tension. To many, those things are an acceptable price to pay for the sense of historicity and connection to the past.

The evangelical rejection of history, tradition, and religion is pushing away the youth who crave just those things as part of a genuine and vital Christian faith.

Toward a solution

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that evangelicals place religious tradition on an equal pedestal with the Scriptures. God's inerrant revelation in Jesus and the Scriptures ought to always be our rule of faith. However, we do need to make a place in our teaching and study for discussion with Christians from the past. Most Christians in the universal church are dead, and they had a lot of really good things to say. They may or may not be right, but we should not tune them out due to our over-hyped fear of religion and religious tradition.

Secondly, I think it would be more edifying to quit beating up on religion and start trying to purify it. When Pharisees practice bad or dead religion, they must be called on it. When our religious institutions give more attention to political campaigns than they do to single mothers, sex slaves, orphaned children, the disabled, and the lost, they should be boldly exhorted. But, to deny religion per se is to deny an essential part of our very humanity, which God himself designed.

Let's push one another on toward "pure and faultless" religion.

James 1:26-27 -- Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. 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.

[1] I'm not here using this as an argument for the existence of God. I'm simply stating that, if God did create human beings, we would expect them to be incurably religious. 
[2] Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. 1559. I, xi, 7.
[3] I suspect this happens because the Bible does not tell us every single detail about God or the Christian life. Being religious, therefore, we instinctively fill in the blanks.