What Is Religion?
I often hear that Christianity is not a religion but a relationship especially from those who are "Born-again" Christians or what is nowadays referred to as Evangelicals or Fundamentalists. It is a relationship with God. You repent of your sins and develop a relationship with Jesus Christ, go through a transformative change, become a different person and live a new lifestyle, but most of all you are on a road to be with God in heaven. The biblical reference often cited for this is from one of the letters of Paul to the Corinthians where he says:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
II Corinthians 5:17, NIV
It was supposed to be different from other religions or even other forms of Christianity like Roman Catholicism or Episcopalian because you are not following any set rules and regulations or performing any kind of rituals. For a long time I believed this even before I became a Christian because when I observed my Catholic or Jewish friends during my high school days that's what it looked like to me. They were following some rule like don't eat pork or some ritual like counting rosary beads and what not. Back then I dismissed it all as superstition.
Later on in college I learned in my comparative religion class that religion is defined as a system of beliefs. A very academic and dispassionate view; therefore, not personally meaningful to me other than merely just another data point on the graph of my education.
One evening I was watching TV and I listened to an interview with a Muslim. He said that Islam was not simply a religion but a way of life. He also said that it was a relationship with God, not any god but the true God. In his case it was Allah. He also said that there was more to it than just simply following a set bunch of rules. At this point I did a double take and I said to myself "Hold on a second, isn't that what Christians say?"
It was at this point that the question was raised in my mind of "What is religion?" What is it really? Can anyone answer this? I had always found the subject of religion interesting to read about. I had read a great deal about it but I was never really sure I truly understood what the religious experience was all about. Having an intellectual understanding of something is not the same as experiencing it. But even experiencing it wasn't enough. Some of the religious services or ceremonies I've attended don't really give you a complete picture.
When I first attended church I don't think I knew what religion was. I met some people I liked and they became sort of a surrogate family for me. Some of whom have become my lifelong friends. I became a Christian partly because of them. I was impressed with their kindness, morality and ethics. I wanted to be with these people but also because I wanted to become part of something that was bigger than myself so I gave my life to Jesus thus becoming a Christian and joined the church. I became religious. But in recent years I have drifted away from this partly because of personal reasons but more so because I did not see the difference in the particular brand of Christianity I was following versus other religious or spiritual ways. There are those who seem to emphasize being spiritual over being religious which I found attractive but still somewhat limited.
I have since then started a process of re-examining my religious or spiritual life and it is still on-going. In my personal research I have come to realize that religion is much more complicated and problematic than I had realized. Throughout history it has done a great deal of good but it has also done a lot of bad. There are those who thrive in it and can't live without and then there are those who are perfectly happy without it.
I think I have a better understanding of what religion or the religious experience is now than in the past but I still have many questions in this area and I am still seeking.
...ktlam...
April 22, 2009
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