Religion
THE CONNOTATION
So, up until recently, I’ve had no use for the word “religion”. It has too many negative connotations, one (of the many) being, “A belief system with a stringent ruleset that must be adhered to, usually to the end of appeasing a deity.”
AN ALTERNATIVE DEFINITION
So it was with surprise that a friend of mine stated that she actually liked the word. Through her education as a massage therapist, she learned that “religion” means “the re-attachment of two ligaments.” Looking at the word, it makes good sense. I just never thought of looking at the etymological roots.
APPLICATION
So, with that word picture, things kind of started to click, as far as what it was that really tied all the religious systems in the world together. I believe there to be an innate sense in all of us that we are separate from something that would make us whole. So we devote much of our lives in pursuit of the objective of re-joining ourselves with it. We can (and have) taken many paths towards that feeling of wholeness; pretty much anything in the world has been used in an attempt to feel whole. I would argue, in a sense, that every person in the world practices religion in some fashion.
Now, almost unilaterally, the term has spiritual connotations, and for good reason. All the religious systems in the world have this in common: The desire to join or be re-joined with the spiritual. There are almost as many methods of this as there are people in the world, and even organized religious systems number easily in the thousands. Anything from wicca to Mormonism to Christianity to Islam to Zen to Buddhism, animism and more are joined in this common goal. They just go about it in largely different fashions.
So, back on the actual word. For a religion to occur, at least one force must be actively attempting a reconnect. There is a part “A” and a part “B”. Let’s take “B” as those who are attempting the reconnect, and “A” being the spiritual thing which A desires to be re-joined with.
Without an exhaustive study of world religions, it seems evident to me that the vast majority of them function under the principle of B getting to A under B’s power. Humans develop, via various sources, a ruleset that is the means to the end of reconnecting with the spiritual (usually, but not nearly always, in the form of a deity). By following these rules, adherents hope to get into the deity’s good graces, keep off their bad side, and work toward being counted worthy of entrance into an eternity of spiritual connect (”heaven”, “nirvana”, etc. are both concepts along this line). These works can be rituals, laws to be followed, things to do and things to avoid, etc. This is a broad-brush generalization, but in my experience, this seems to be the case.
A DIFFERENT METHOD
There is, however, a religious system that functions very different in a fundamental fashion, as far as how the re-connect is initiated and its use of laws and rules. This belief is Christianity. The main difference I see is that instead of B (us) initiating the reconnect, it is A (God) that does so. Instead of building a stairway to heaven out of works, God extended His hand down to us, with the only requirement on our part being to grab hold of it. Thus is the reconnect initiated.
My post “Know, Live, Live” expresses my belief as to why God chose to behave in this fashion. I think I would be needlessly retreading if I re-explained it in its entirety, so I’m just going to give a nutshell explanation. Basically, God wanted kids, so He made us. He wanted children that would choose, of their own free will, to seek relationship with Him. When Adam and Eve sinned in Eden, the disconnect occurred, and it has been since that event that God has desired a reconnect.
SIN AND THE LAW
Regarding sin, I am going to re-hash a bit, because I think it’s important. Sin literally means, “to miss the mark”. So, it’s deviation away from an ideal path. God has a plan for our lives, and that’s the path. When we stray from that path, it’s sin. This act also creates a divide from God, as we’re moving away from His path. We can also sin with regards to each other, and we can sin without realizing it.
In my family, we keep our shoes on in the house. Kick ‘em up on the coffee table, who cares. That’s just how we roll. But say I go to someone else’s house with my clodhoppers on, not considering that their rules and expectations may be different from my own. So I go on in, walking on their carpet and messing it up. I’ve broken a house rule, and I’ve sinned against them. Even though I don’t even know, there’s now that deviancy from their rules, and a resultant divide. The only way to rectify and reconnect is for me to know that the transgression existed. The burden of notification is placed on the offended. If they were of a charitable and graceful mindset, they might say something like, “Yo, I know you totally didn’t mean to offend. We have a house rule here where we take our shoes off before we go further into the house. Now, you didn’t know, and we’re not holding it against you. Yeah, it will take some work on our part to clean the carpet, but that’s life. In the future though, would you be so kind as to adhere to this rule you are now aware of?” And we’d go on from there (ideally).
Like in the above illustration, the law is not an end in itself, but rather a means to the end of shedding light on a course deviation. It’s like the traffic bumps (”turtles”) on roads. They show us the edge of the path. So God’s intention of the law is not to create hoops for us to jump though; there’s no need for that, because He (the deity, the desired spiritual connect) has already accepted us and considered us worthy. Why would He, who desires real relationships with us and extends Himself to us unconditionally, make us do tricks for his approval?
Jesus says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” We all have burdens in this life. It is inescapable. It doesn’t matter who we are or where we are, burdens are common to all man. A yoke, then, when viewed from this angle, is a good thing. A yoke serves to balance out a load. So, in effect, Jesus is telling us that He has the right way to balance out our burdens instead of us trying to carry them in a lopsided duffel bag. And in addition, He offers us a lighter load.
The law’s purpose is to keep us on the road. But even if we disregard the law and crash and burn, as we so often do–multiple times daily–we are still firmly in His grasp, and nothing we can do or choose not to do has any bearing on that. We are powerless to alter or weaken His grip. Once we accept His hand, He wouldn’t think of letting us go.