“I’m not religious”

Would anyone have said “I’m not religious” when (in Jesus’ name) the Early Church believers healed the sick and did miracles? More likely the onlookers would have said “Where do I sign? How do I join?”

How deplorable that this life-changing, supernatural, miracle-working Jesus has been relegated to “religion.” He made the blind to see, the deaf to hear, turned water into wine. He was not a “religious” person. He was given the adulation accorded a king, but showed the utmost humility.

How lamentable that the Son of God, born of a virgin, risen from the grave, is now put in a “religious” box. The Sadducees and Pharisees of Jesus’ day slavishly followed a long list of religious rules, probably with long faces to match. Jesus ignored their rules and healed on the Sabbath.

They were “religious,” but Jesus was angry. He knew they were pious on the outside, rotten on the inside. They were paying only lip-service to God.

"Being religious" is not an accurate description of a true, born-again Christian.

Surely the common saying “I’m not religious” is a reflection on Christianity today. If people see what should be a supernatural faith as “just religion” then something is wrong. Slowly over the years the dynamic faith of the Early Church has become in general a powerless caricature.

How sad that anyone saying “I’m not religious” rejects “religion” but also rejects Jesus. They throw Jesus out with the religious bathwater. They spurn the gospel, failing to see that Jesus and “religion” are as far apart as Fiji and Antarctica.

To believe or disbelieve Christ is a person’s choice. However, Jesus’ words in the Bible reveal the issue is not of “being religious” but of eternal life or death. Even a ten-year-old can understand Jesus’ words - those who believe and trust in Him have sins forgiven and eternal life; those who don’t believe have the wrath of God upon them.

So why do folks say “I’m not religious”? Is it because they picture a counterfeit Christianity of cavernous, echoing cathedrals full of ritual, pomp and ceremony; people merely practising religious ritual?

Those are questions today’s Christian leaders need to ponder.

Do people see Christians as being little different to themselves? Do those same people label Christianity as “just religion” because they don’t see the real McCoy?

Thank God for those churches which do operate in Holy Spirit power as in Acts – but they are too few.

Individual Christians need to think deeply on what it means to follow Christ. We should aspire to being what Jesus told us to be - the salt of the earth, a city on a hill, a shining light.

Believers are to break out of today’s sit-in-the-building mentality and go public for Jesus: become bold people full of the Holy Spirit, doing the supernatural ministry of Acts. People directed by God, not by the traditions, fads and trends of men.

Then maybe, at the mention of Jesus, we wouldn’t hear the response “I’m not religious.”