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When did religion become a bad word?

When did authority, hierarchy, and religion become bad words?  Recently, I heard a mom tell her son that they believed in the Bible but not religion.  What?  How can we believe in a book that was formed by religion and yet not the religion itself?  This seems a peculiar reading of history at best.  The Bible was formed over centuries by the people of God as they collected the stories that helped them keep the faith and described the love of God actively working in the world.  The Bible helps us through faith to become wise about salvation and equips the people of God to do good works (2 Timothy 3:15-16).  The Bible is not against religion.  The Bible provides the correct understanding about what true religion is.  Inspired by the Holy Spirit and tested through centuries, the Bible provides both instruction and correction in how religion should be ordered.  

But, before I’m too dismissive of the mother’s assertion.  Could it be that she and our broader culture are trying to name something that is damaging the Christian witness and preventing true religion from emerging.  Could their disdain for religion be actually a disdain for bad religion, abuse of authority, and patriarchal hierarchies that keep the religion of the heart from taking form and inhibit experiences of the true God?  Could it be that authority, hierarchy, and even the word religion itself have become so tainted by bad practices that they have become synonymous with evils that true religion would deplore?  Has our culture moved beyond religion?  Or, have we correctly become disenchanted with expressions of Christian faith that are more marketing than life transforming, more commercial than life sustaining?  Is the 21st century religious landscape in America more of a facade than a faithful re-presentation of Christ?  

1 John seems to take these issues head on.  Written to a Christian community, the author of John — in my opinion, likely the apostle —, challenges the community to move beyond lies and falseness to living a life of love.  The Christian faith — true religion — is not authoritarian.  Instead, an authoritative love emerges that leads people into authentic relationship with the risen Lord.  Hierarchy emerges not through power and oppression, but because there is an ordering to the world and that ordering is holy, hierarchy literally translates as holy ordering.  And, scriptural Christianity asserts that religion is lifeless and void and even false when it is not characterized by love.  Love authentically expressed is the litmus test between true and false religion.  The more I re-read 1 John, the more I am persuaded that it is a book about the centrality of love in our walk of faith.  Although the language employed in the book is often hard on the ears (the word liar appears often), the book is primarily written in love and providing admonishments that call us to love in that same way.  


And, just as there is no truth without love, there is no love with out truth.  Without the cleansing love of God made known in the world through Jesus, we miss the true meaning of love.  Without the sacrificial love of God that redeems even me, we will never be able to love even the people who seem to be purveyors of false religion.  It will take the example of love we have in Jesus for us to never succumb to hating those practicing false religion or anyone for that matter.  Instead, 1 John calls us to love both those in agreement with us and those we want to dislike into the possibilities of what God is doing to make love known in the world.  Real love is needed for real religion to emerge.  Real religion has the love of God being made known through Jesus as its only aim.  The Holy Scripture like 1 John provide the inspired corrective to help us back onto the way of love.  May we promote scriptural holiness and spread love through our land.  

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