RELIGION

Religion

Candlewax, chanting monks in hooded cloaks with voices echoing off cold-brick walls in monasteries. This is what the word ‘religion’ brings to my mind: monks and monasteries! To be sure, it could just as easily be Muslims and mosques or any others involved in religious rituals in religious buildings. Yes, ‘religion’ is one of those funny words that can mean different things to different folks. I heard one preacher say that when he was converted his mates started saying that he had found religion. But he maintains that he hadn’t found religion. Rather that he’d found his Creator! I would even contend that Atheism is a just another religion! So, what is religion? Is it all about relics and robes, chants and churches and bats in belfies? Or is there more to it?

Let’s dig a little deeper. An on-line Oxford dictionary uses the expected words such as faith, belief and worship of God or gods to define religion. However, it also includes the following: Religion: ‘A pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.’ We see how hard it is to nail down a precise meaning for the word religion when we consider the following: Many (but not all) Atheists are greatly devoted to removing every last vestige of God from Western civilization! For example, consider the title of the late great militant Atheist Christopher Hitchens’s book, ‘God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.’ Clearly Hitchens excluded his own form of Atheism from ‘religion.’ So, the question then becomes: What is true religion? True religion is about worshiping God as He is (i.e. Spirit) the way He wants (i.e. in spirit and in truth, Exo. 20:2-8). For Jesus gives the following definition, ‘God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth’ John 4:24. Therefore, God is not sticks and stones, lakes and mountains, planets and stars. Nor are these sorts of things to be used as props or aids to worship. Nor should buildings, no matter how ornate. For, when the woman at the well said to Jesus, ‘“Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem worship the Father”’ John 4:20-21. None of this is to say that there is anything wrong with donning your Sunday best to worship God in a nice church building, but only that garments and garb, spaces and places are things indifferent. For true religion has to do with greatly devoting ourselves to God. One may feel closer to God in a garden than in a building, but whether in a garden or in a building God wants to be worshiped in ‘spirit and truth’ (c.f. Luke 10:27-28).

Spirit and truth are spelled out in the Bible. For example, Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, ‘You worship what you do not know’ John 4:22a. Matthew Henry comments on this: ‘Ignorance is so far from being the mother of devotion that it is the murderer of it.’ Therefore, true religion devotes itself to the pursuit of the knowledge of God. Jesus went on to say, ‘We know what we worship…’ John 4:22b. Thus, true religion is about knowing God, which includes engaging the mind as to how He wants to be served and to be worshiped. 

How is true religion to be practiced? , ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbour as yourself.’ Luke 10:27.

VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers

When I told my older brother in Scotland that I was becoming and Australian Army Chaplain, ‘Great!’ he exclaimed, ‘God’s army is invading the Australian Army!’ God’s army, like the Australian Army, is made up of volunteers. There is no conscription. David, the sweet psalmist of Israel said it best, ‘Your people shall be volunteers, in the day of Your power…’ Psalm 110:3a NKJV. Psalm 110 is called a ‘Messianic psalm,’ i.e., a Gospel psalm. No one enters God’s army kicking and screaming. No one becomes a Christian against their will. Indeed, another version of the Bible renders the same thus, ‘Your troops will be willing on your day of battle…’ Psalm 110:3a NIV. God’s army therefore is made up of volunteers, people who willingly worship and serve God.

I first heard the word ‘voluntold’ used when I was in the army. It describes the idea illustrated in the following sentence. The sergeant major said, ‘I need three volunteers, you, you and you!’ However, there’s none of this regarding the prophet Isaiah. When the Triune God asked, ‘“Whom shall I send, and who shall go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”’ Isaiah 6:8b. Isaiah was being sent on an onerous mission to rebuke God’s disobedient people.

The enemy strives to remain undetected in modern warfare. From stealth aircraft to missile-loaded drones. No longer do soldiers stand in trenches firing bullets at each other across ‘no man’s land.’ The Christian wars against an invisible enemy too, an enemy who shoots ‘fiery darts’ that can smoulder in any chinks in the Christian’s armour. ‘Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints’ Ephesians 6:11-18. Who would volunteer for an army that fights an enemy it cannot even see? – such a formidable enemy as Satan and his host from hell? Only those who God has enabled to see the invisible, which is only those who have been born of the Spirit. ‘Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God’ John 3:3b, such as was Moses, who ‘By faith ... forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible’ Hebrews 11:27.

Whether a heavenly host or a detachment of demons both are spiritually recognised. ‘But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned’ 1 Corinthians 2:14. In God’s army the faithful wear night vision goggles, enabling the discerning to observe the movements of the forces of darkness as plain as day! (2 Cor. 2:11)

Enlist now! Volunteer! And ‘Be all you can be in [Christ’s] army!’