On Religion

This will not be one of those cliche` statements on religion. Ya know the ones that say like "I don't follow a religion, I follow a relationship"...or even the t-shirts that say "It's against my relationship to have a religion"...I can assure you it wont be that. Also just to go ahead and get this out of the way this will most likely be the longest blog to date. With that being said:

True Religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time. The messenger of Christ, though he speaks from God, must also, as the Quakers used to say, "speak to the condition" of his listeners; otherwise he will speak a language known only to himself. His message must not be only timeless but timely. He must speak to his own generation.

The message of his words/teachings do not grow out of these times but it is appropriate to them. It is called forth by a condition which has existed in the Church for some years and is steadily growing worse. I am refering to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted it for one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men. This the Church has done not necessarily deliberately, but little by little and without the Churches knowledge; and the churches unawareness only makes our(believers) situation all the more tragic.

The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.

With the loss of the sense of Majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet with God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit. The words, "be still, and know that I am God," mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper in 21st century.

This loss of the concept of majesty has come just when the forces of religion are making dramatic gains and the churches are more prosperous than at any time within the past several hundred years. But the alarming thing is that our gains are mostly external and our losses wholly internal; and since it is the quality of our religion that is affected by internal conditions, it may be that our supposed gains are actually losses spread over a wider field.

The only way to recoup our spiritual losses is to go back to the cause of them make such corrections as the truth warrants. The decline of the Knowledge of God has brought on our troubles. A rediscovery of the sheer majesty of God will go a long way to curing them. It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneus or inadequate. If we would bring back spiritual power to our lives, we MUST begin to think of God more nearly as He is.

Because what we think about when we think about God is the most, the most, the most important thing about us. No religion has ever been greater than it's idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the greatest question before the Church is always God himself.

If I were able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question "what comes to your mind when you think about God?" I could predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man.

Without doubt, the mightiest, and heaviest thought the mind can entertain is the tought of God, and the heaviest word in any language is it's word for God.

Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and rigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God. This is where I am in my religion. And I am totally okay with calling it religion.

I would like to end this blog with a prayer by the late great A.W.T

" O Lord God Almighty, not the God of the philosophers and the wise but the God of the prophets and apostles; and better than all the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, may I express Thee unblamed? They that know Thee not may call upon Thee as other than Thou art, and so worship not Thee but a creature of their own fancy; therefore enlighten our minds that we may know Thee as Thou art, so that we may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen"

So here's to all of you with your religious cliche`...