MCLEODS, New Brunswick, March 12, 2024 – I am not a fan of religion. I believe that organized religion, more than any other force on Earth (including sin and Satan) is the biggest barrier stopping people from seeking God. This should be ironic, that religion prevents people from finding God, but it’s actually been par for the course for thousands of years. Jesus also had issues with organized religion during his ministry years and likewise considered it to be the main stumbling block to genuine faith.

Even so, organized religion can still be used as a resource tool for genuine believers. It has good value in that regard and God permits it to continue mainly for that purpose. In my case, God encouraged me to attend mass every day for nearly three and a half years after I was reborn from atheism so that I could be in an environment where belief was accepted and I could hear God’s Word spoken and explained, albeit from a Catholic perspective. I was grateful at the time (and still am) that the doors to the various Catholic churches I attended were open for the scheduled services and that the priests did the job they were paid to do. But as I matured in my faith and reached the stage where I needed to be consciously developing a relationship with God as my Father and Jesus as my brother and best friend, God pulled back the veil cloaking Catholicism, and what I saw made me walk out, never to return.

Jesus used the synagogues and the temple for teaching purposes. He also took full advantage of the hospitality of the religious powers-that-be by accepting their invitations to dine, knowing full well that their motive for inviting him was less than charitable. But eating at their tables and using their religious buildings for his purposes didn’t blind Jesus to the problems inherent in organized religion and didn’t stop him from making the best of the situation and suggesting better ways forward than killing those who disagreed with you. He didn’t overlook the corruption and rot that had come to characterize Judaism; he stared it down and offered himself as a solution.

Faith, as we know, is far more than just reciting a list of beliefs and attending a service. Faith is life, as much as God is life and Jesus is life. I know for a sure fact that without my faith, I would be dead. My faith encompasses my belief in God and Jesus and everything they teach, but it also includes how I interact with people on a day-to-day basis when I’m not consciously thinking about God and Jesus. My faith informs those interactions, and charity guides them. That’s the goal, anyway.

When Jesus said that God was looking for people to worship him in spirit and in truth, he meant God was looking for genuine believers who were interested in the practical application of Jesus’ teachings, not hypocrites who relied on ritual to mask their lack of belief. Ritual has its place in faith when used sparingly (like in the changes to the ritual of the Passover meal that Jesus introduced), but it should never override faith or be equated with faith. Ritual should never be the centerpiece of faith. The centerpiece of faith should always be our one-on-one relationship with God and Jesus, which should not be contrived and preset but unfeigned and spontaneous, the way we are with anyone we love and who loves us in return.

What does the practical application of Jesus’ teachings look like? It can take many forms, but it definitely doesn’t look like religion. It looks like everyday life. It also doesn’t announce itself as the practical application of Jesus’ teachings: It simply responds to situations as Jesus did.

We born-again believers aren’t called to be religious; we’re called to follow Jesus, which means we’re called to make the same life choices Jesus did – everyday Jesus, not religious Jesus. There’s no such person as religious Jesus.

May you never let religion come between you and God.