The way to be right with God in every religion is by earning your way. It is based on works, not grace. Christianity is different from every religion in this aspect: all other religions (including Mormonism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism) state that you must earn the right to be reconciled with God. It is by what you do in this life (good deeds or bad deeds) that determines your eternal destiny. Christianity is completely different from this. It is not religion. My high school American Literature Teacher, Mr. Patton, (who wasn’t a Christian) described it this way:
“The difference between Christianity and every other faith in the world is that all other religions are about man trying to reach up to God. Christianity is about God reaching down to man.”
This is a very important distinction, and it is core to what I believe, so I would like to try to clarify what I mean. Here is the way I am defining religion:
Religion is a system of beliefs or a code of moral conduct that judges (qualifies or disqualifies) a person based on their adherence and obedience to certain codes, rules, laws, traditions, or the performance of required acts.
Religion (almost universally) is enforced by those in power in an attempt to maintain, increase, or abuse their power over others. Religion is the creation of man and is not the intention or design of God. A modern day example (taken from the movie “Footloose”, starring Kevin Bacon) is a preacher who believes that dancing leads to promiscuity and destructive behavior (the Bible does not speak against dancing). He uses (abuses) his influence and his position of authority to convince his congregation that dancing is evil and forbids it. He sets up rules that are not in the Bible and adds additional beliefs that Jesus never endorsed. He is trying to control the people, using their trust of his authority to force them to believe his version of the truth. He adds rules that don’t exist in the Bible. In this example, he even has good motives, but he is still being religious and this “religion” is not from God. This is so very common. People have used Jesus to justify adding so many “requirements” to being a Christian. Here are just a few of the countless examples:
- Not drinking alcohol
- Not listening to certain types of music
- Insisting that church meet on certain days
- Only certain forms of music can be used in church
- You can’t be saved unless you are circumcised
- Reciting ritualistic prayers
- Saying you aren’t saved unless you get baptized
- You can’t eat certain foods
- Requiring you to perform rituals
- Being saved is conditional upon attending church or church membership
- Saying that you have to earn your salvation by doing good deeds
I could go on and on. When Jesus was on the earth, religion was very rampant, as it is today. There was a group of corrupt religious leaders called the Pharisees who had taken the word of God, passed down from Moses and the prophets (the Torah), and written a commentary on it interpreting what the scriptures said (called the Talmud). Then they wrote another commentary on that commentary called the “Mishnah”. The Mishnah was a list of hundreds rules to meet in order to insure that you were obeying the word of God. These were created by man and had little basis in the actual scripture.
For example, one of the 10 Commandments (from the Torah) was, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy”. The Pharisees had made literally hundreds of rules in the Mishnah that detailed to the n-th degree what you had to do in order to keep that commandment. There was a rule that you couldn’t walk through a field on the Sabbath because your sandal might clip a grain of wheat, and if it did you would be harvesting grain. If you were harvesting, you had worked on the Sabbath and sinned. Another example is that you could not spit on the ground on the Sabbath because your spit would create mud and this was making mortar. If you created mortar you were working on the Sabbath and therefore sinning.
Jesus hated this! He hated the way the Pharisees used the people’s love for God (or fear of God) to control them, limit their freedom, and empty them of the relationship with God that was intended. When you practice religion, your relationship with God is degraded to a mathematical formula. Do this, then do this, don’t do that, and presto. . . you are right in the eyes of God. This is TOTALLY missing the point! God wants so much more. He wants to have a real relationship with you. He wants to show his love to you and He wants you to love Him. That was the point of the original commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy”. The Sabbath day was supposed to be a day for us to take a little break from working, refocus on what’s important, spend time with our family, and spend time with God. You can’t build a deep relationship without spending quality time together.
If you read the 10 Commandments you will notice that they are all about relationships. They are either about improving our relationship with God or with other people. As Jesus Himself said:
“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” ~ Matt 22:37-40
And Paul said:
“For the commandments say, “You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not covet.” These—and other such commandments—are summed up in this one commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God’s law.” ~ Rom 13:9-10
So the law can be summed up in love; love for God and love for others. The law is about relationships; vertical and horizontal. It is about our vertical relationship with our creator and our horizontal relationships with the rest of mankind. It was never intended to be a list of rules that can be relegated to a checklist or mathematical formula. We are talking about love.
So the Pharisees took the commandment to remember the Sabbath and added religion to it by making that ridiculous rule about spitting on the ground. Jesus showed his complete disregard for their rules when he repeatedly healed people on the Sabbath. The Pharisees considered this “work”. On one particular occasion, He healed a blind man on the Sabbath by spitting on the ground, making some mud, and rubbing it on the man’s eyes. Jesus was God. He didn’t have to spit on the ground to heal the man. He was making a point to the Pharisees and everyone watching him that religion was wrong.
“Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam“. So the man went and washed, and came home seeing. Then they took the man who had been blind to the Pharisees, because it was on the Sabbath that Jesus had made the mud and healed him. Some of the Pharisees said, “This man Jesus is not from God, for he is working on the Sabbath.” ~ John 9:6-7, 13-14, 16
Religion is man trying to reach up to God. The message of Christianity is God reaching down to man. Religion is about what man has to DO to be right with God. Christianity is about what God has already DONE to provide us the opportunity to be right with Him. Religion says you must EARN your salvation by doing good deeds or certain acts and not doing evil. Christianity says all we need to do is BELIEVE that Christ has already paid the price for the evil we have done. Christianity says we are all evil (filled with sin) and there is nothing we can do to earn the right to be saved. Christianity says that God (in the form of Jesus Christ) stepped into our place and paid the awful price that had to be paid for us. He gave us the free gift of salvation if we choose to believe in Jesus.
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