Jesus is not religion

I saw this shirt. It was black and its white letters seemed to plead "Jesus is not Religion." I stared at the shirt meditating on its message, which by the way can seem very creepy if the person in the shirt ain't a dude. So don't be making that mistake. "I was just reading your shirt, honest." Uh huh.

Anyways, as cliched as that statement has now become it still makes me think and think again.
He's not, is he? In fact, I'm quite sure his primary interest in coming to earth wasn't to preach doctrines about himself whilst starting up a religion that gives you tax breaks come spring. He wasn't into all that stuff. The pharisees were. They made out with the law on a daily basis. When Jesus came preaching that they should feel the need to see other people, starting with him, they didn't like it so much. They loved the law. At least they thought they did. I think they were just infatuated with it. Like we are at times.

What if Religion is based on infatuation but relationship with Jesus is based on love? I have been infatuated with many a girl in my day but I've only ever loved one. Perhaps spiritual formation is the act of teaching people how to move from infatuation to love. Perhaps Churches need to move too. To what?

Instrumental Music, Women's Roles, Baptism, Lord's Supper, Small Groups, Budget, Operations, Building extensions - its all Religion in my mind. As a Church we're infatuated with it, so much so we think we're in love. But it feels wrong, like somethings. . .wrong. So we try to fix it. We allow an instrumental service on a Saturday night, we allow Women to pass communion and in some cases even pray, we encourage Baptism but no longer believe its a deal breaker, we make the Lord's supper more celebratory, we move from being a church with small groups to a church of small groups, we step out in faith and raise the budget, we pray at the Operation committee meetings, we paint our building and in some cases even replace the carpet. We do all these things expecting it will lead into a relationship but are disappointed when we discover that we've only perpetuated the very thing we were trying to eradicate in the first place. We've perpetuated our infatuation. The problem with infatuation is at the time it feels like the real thing - but its not. Its only fantasy, the product of our imagination. And if you look closely, it often has selfishness at its root.

Jesus is not that. Jesus is not religion.

Jesus is love. And he calls us to it. And he calls us to him.

Time to leave our adolesence behind.

John

P.S. So what's this mean for church? Now that's something worth spending our time discussing.