No Interest in Religion

I’m not much interested in religion.  It doesn’t do anything for me, because religion has only to do with religion.  Religion, as practiced, is very often separated from the practical affairs of life and society.  How many times have you heard this platitude:  “Religion and politics don’t mix.”  If religion and politics “don’t mix” and have nothing to do with each other, then religion is also separated from every other aspect of life. Of what good is that to me? Why waste my time dabbling in religion if it is of no consequence, if it has no connection with my life or my world?  It is a waste of time.

Religion is defined as “the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.”  Religion is often characterized as a precious, private, individual, personal possession protecting and shielding one from the vicissitudes of life.  It often equates success, goodness, health, and security as synonyms for righteousness or as a product of one’s faith.  Mere religion is almost always exclusionary, because the religious suppose that only the religious know about God or care about God, and that God cares only about the religious.  Mere religion is possessive toward God and acts as though God’s existence depends upon them.  Mere religion thinks God is a secret which has been disclosed only to those who practice that particular religion. I have no interest in such.

But I do have great interest in the fact that God is no secret and God is with me,  us, and all others, everywhere, all the time, and right now.  God has been with us and all others, everywhere, all the time, and right now, long before we ever called upon Him, knew of Him, or recognized Him. Religion suggests that God is yet to be discovered.  The Bible declares that God has already come among us.  Religion speculates that there is a God, somewhere out there.  The Old Testament and the Gospel of Jesus Christ report God’s presence and action in this world even in those circumstances within which we are unaware of God’s presence.  The very possibility of my faith is given in God’s initiative toward me (not the other way around as mere religion would suggest).  My life, once lost, is found and returned to me by God, a living and contemporary presence in this world.  

God is present in this world, in everyday life, in my life and yours, in politics, in everything.  God is not some abstract power.  God is in this world; not outside it.  God makes himself known in history.  And more, God cares for everything that has to do with life (including politics), with life as it is lived by anybody and everybody day in and day out, no matter how tarnished, distorted, ugly, confused, and conflicted our lives may be. 

"To be a Christian is, wonderfully, ...synonymous with what it
means to be no more and no less than a human being..."
(William Stringfellow)