The Hijacking Of Pure Religion
We’ve been following a hijacked religion.
It’s time to admit that and go back to Scripture.
Religion is not an appealing word, or even in today’s Christian culture. When nonreligious people think of religion, they think of the bloody sacrifices of Jewish priests or the strict rules of Islamic prayer rituals. When many Christians think of the word, they tie it to legalistic doctrines and abusive church structures. Religion in many cases has become synonymous with structure, order, and tyranny.
In short, most people tend to think of religion as a long list of hard standards to follow and a powerful group of people who hold authority to punish you if you don’t follow those standards to a T. And to be honest, we conservative Christians are largely responsible for why religion has become such a dirty word.
Because the Bible tells us the opposite about religion.
No verse better encapsulates God’s view of religion than James 1:27.
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
I don’t know how many times I’ve wished for Scripture to just give me a plain definition for something. And here, we have just that. What does God say religion is?
It’s pure and undefiled. Other words we could use for it are holy and unblemished. It is separated from sin and unmarred from evil behavior. That’s what religion is, but what does it look like? This verse answers that too.
Religion looks like visiting orphans and widows.
Yes, it’s really that simple.
Religion that is pure before God looks like giving yourself to those who have no one else to lean on.
Religion first and foremost is not a list of sins to avoid but a list of relationships to pursue. My world changed when I understood that.
Being religious doesn’t only mean avoiding sin—as we’ll see in a moment—but it also means pursuing the good of others. We too often think of the Pharisee as an example of a religious person when we should be thinking of the good Samaritan. Religion first and foremost, according to James, is about caring for others.
It’s important to remember that James’ example of visiting orphans and widows is just that: an example. It’s not the pinnacle of righteousness. James’ command to visit orphans and widows could also look like taking a meal to a sick church member, having coffee with an unsaved neighbor, or just spending quality time with your family.
James is simply echoing Jesus: pure religion is just loving God with all your heart and loving your neighbor as yourself. Pure religion sees someone who needs love and acts to show them that love, just as Jesus taught and exemplified for us.
But what about the last part of the verse? Isn’t religion also about avoiding sin?
Yes, it is, and we should live by the second half of James 1:27 as much as we live by the first half of it.
But sadly I believe we as Christians, especially conservative Christians, have emphasized the second half of James 1:27 while ignoring the first half of it.
We’ve preached on avoiding the sins of the world to such a degree that we’re afraid of even entering and engaging the world.
We’ve taught over and over and over on the evils of sexual immorality that we’ve created a purity culture within our churches that harms rather than helps young boys and girls.
We’ve nailed down the dangers of drunken orgies to such a degree that we think it’s wrong to go out for a drink with friends.
We’ve emphasized God’s desire for modesty so much that girls are often afraid of wearing something that may go “over the line,” and boys are told that Jesus loves when they wear a tie.
In summary, conservative Christians have made a habit of hijacking Scripture’s pure religion and turning it into a man-made religion based on extra-biblical standards. We’ve so emphasized keeping ourselves unstained from the world that we’ve made religion exclusively about that.
I don’t believe this is from bad intentions. I don’t think conservative Christians desire to make religion so difficult to follow and love to act as authoritarians. Rather, we so deeply care about religion and God’s holiness that we’ve set up a secondary religion as an extra safeguard to keep us from rebelling against pure religion. And in many cases, our secondary religion has become our biblical religion.
We’ve hijacked pure and undefiled religion.
I say this as a person who happily identifies as a conservative Christian. I’m not throwing rocks at the house while standing on the street. I’m still sitting comfortably in the living room. But I’ve observed how those of us inside the conservative Christian household have manipulated what the Bible means by “pure religion” to advance our own man-made religion. And I believe that our man-made religion has hurt many of our brothers in Christ and represented the gospel poorly to those outside of the house.
We’ve hijacked the Bible’s pure religion for our own self-interests. We need to admit that and move past it while still holding firm to the pure religion of Scripture.
Religion is a beautiful expression toward God and others when we practice it the way the Bible tells us to. It only becomes destructively ugly when it’s hijacked for other purposes.