- True Religion
An old slave song “You Must Have That True Religion” gives voice to fundamental things, largely because there is too much false religion masquerading as the real thing. A man asked Jesus, “What is the greatest commandment?” which is another way of inquiring about true religion. Jesus drew upon the holy book of his own tradition, quoting the double duty to “love God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind; and you neighbor as yourself.”
Later, the apostle John, in what we now call his first letter, traces this love toward God back to God’s love for us, all of us. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love I from God…In this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son… Since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”
Love, then, is the essence of true religion. God loves us. In return, we love God and love one another.
All else is secondary, including things like sacraments and sanctuaries, institutions and organizations, and doctrines and decrees. The religious world expends great energy and resources on these things. Much of this is self-serving, designed to strengthen a religious tradition or defend the rights and privileges of religious cultures. But these are all secondary, and too often they displace love as the focus of religious endeavor.
The prophets and poets of biblical religion (Hebrew, Jew, and Christian) understood this. The core confession of Hebrew religion is simple: “Hear, O Israel. The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Throughout the Hebrew scriptures this refrain rings strong: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and God’s compassion is over all that God has made.” It is this tradition that Jesus and his followers continued with their emphasis on God’s love for us and our love for God. This is true religion.
- False Religion
False religion takes many forms, but few are as destructive in every sense of the word as that characterized by anger, hate, revenge, and violence. These emotions and the actions that flow from them constitute the very opposite of true religion. The gospel accounts of Jesus illustrate this. Not once can Jesus be described as angry, hateful, vengeful, or violent. Yes, he warned religious leaders of impending doom, and yes, he once expressed his distaste for commercializing religion when he turned over the tables in the temple complex. He urged his followers to be peacemakers, and he advised them to leave town when they saw a hostile army approaching. “Those that live by the sword also die by the sword,” he famously said to his friends when they tried to prevent his arrest. He accepted death rather than engage in violence.
This posture was at odds with much in his own tradition, and also ours. Religion is known for its tendency to dissolve into destructive actions. Witches are drowned, heretics are burned, and people of all kinds are condemned to hell. This is false religion.
This tradition of violence in the name of God is imbedded in our own Hebrew-Jewish-Christian tradition. For instance, the book of Joshua describes the destruction of Jericho, first, with the famous even days of marking around the city until the “walls came tumbling down” and, then, this: “They devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.” The crucifixion of Jesus was itself an act of religious devotion, as the temple leaders brought charges against Jesus and took their case to Roman authorities. Later, Saul of Tarsus secured permission to travel to Damascus to arrest any there who had joined the Jesus movement. The New Testament book of Revelation itself has served as a catalyst for violent images and actions.
It is little wonder, then, that Christianity has its own despicable history of violence. Chief among these, we all know, are the Crusades, approved by the highest authorities in Christianity and executed with Christian symbols and Christian people. Islam, also, has its tradition of violence, dating back to the very beginning of the religion in the sixth century. Ireland, India, and a hundred other places around the globe testify to the violence that can ensue when true religion succumbs to its shadow side and embraces hatred, condemnation, and violence.
[
“Then I saw heaven opened and there was a white horse! Its rider is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like aflame of fire, and on his head are many diadems; and he has a name inscribed that no one known but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, wearing fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh, he has a name inscribed, ‘King of kings and Lord of lords’.” Revelation 19:11-16]
3. Neighbor
Jesus teaches us to love one another, especially in the story of what we now call the Good Samaritan. A religious scholar asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life, a good and proper question. Jesus responded with his own question, “What is written in the Torah?” To which the man replied, to love God and love my neighbor.” When Jesus commended him on his accurate answer, the man asked, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus responded with a story of the man who was accosted, beaten, and robbed while walking the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Religious leaders of Judaism ignored his plight, but a person of a despised sect, the Samaritans, took pity on him and ministered to his need. The story ended with the question, Who was neighbor to the man in need?
The punch and power of this story depends upon the denigration heaped upon the religion and culture of the Samaritan. Samaria was the mountainous territory north of Jerusalem. Residents there treasured the Hebrew Torah but in a way different than the Jews in Jerusalem. They were considered heretics by the religious establishment, much like the Jesus people a few decades later. A stream of judgment and rejection flowed from Jerusalem toward Samaria.
Jesus selected this Samaritan and this religion to be the hero of his story. He was the Samaritan who had compassion on the distraught traveler, a Jew. In other words, he loved the man in the ditch. He acted in the best interest of the beaten man, not because he had an emotional attachment to him or even because he considered him a friend. He saw another human person in need, and he had the ability and opportunity to help. That, Jesus implied, is what it means to love another person as you love yourself. Take care of the other person just as you would take care of yourself.
This story illustrates how care for another person, regardless of their ideology or situation in life, is true religion while the prior judgment about doctrine, affiliation, or loyalty followed by indifference to their wellbeing is false religion. The test of true love, then, is how we as individuals and as a group (community, nation, religion) respond to the needs of those around us, such as addicts, homeless, immigrants, refugees, sick, and handicapped. To love our neighbors is the rule that governs both our personal interactions with people as well as the public policies of our community or government.
[“
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now, we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” First Corinthians 13]
- Forgiveness
While the care of a person is one side of love, there is another side: forgiveness. And forgiveness is right at the center of true religion as it is described and embodied in the biblical narrative, especially in the life of Jesus.
God is described as a forgiving God. In the great praise hymn Psalm 103, “who forgives all your iniquity” is presented as one of the attributes of God that justify the acclamation, “Bless the Lord.” David understood this divine quality when he asked for forgiveness, in Psalm 51: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love…. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight…. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” The entire sacrificial system of the Hebrew people and their Jewish descendants is built upon this tension between the sin of the people and the forgiveness of God.
Years before the psalms were composed and gathered, a moving scene unfolded as Jacob reunites with Esau, his older brother whom he had swindled. Instead of revenge, Esau embraces forgiveness and restores the relationship. Later, Joseph forgives his brothers who years earlier had sold him into slavery. Jesus told the story of the father who forgave his wayward son. And when he was hanging on the cross, one of the Seven Last Words of Jesus was the now famous sentence, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
In the prayer Jesus gave us to pray, there is the explicit attention to forgiveness: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Paul the apostle, years after experiencing forgiveness from God, writes to the Ephesians this simple life principle: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.” Thus, forgiveness in both the personal and public realms has passed into the definition of real religion. False religion is the search for revenge; true religion is the grace to forgive.
In recent times, forgiveness has played a role in several public events. The people gathered in Immanuel AME Church in Charleston SC told the judge they forgave the young man who had entered their Wednesday night Bible Study, only to pull out a gun and kill nine people, including the pastor. And further away, in South Africa, leaders took the nation through a “truth and reconciliation” process which included a ceremony of forgiveness. When nations take revenge upon others (as Israel is doing now with Gaza and Hamas), it cultivates the false religion that makes true religion impossible for generations.
