Monday, January 18, 2010

Let's leave my religion out of it

I'm not wild about religion. I'm just not. Neither yours nor mine.

To participate in your religion, I might have to dress up in a coat and tie, sing to organ music from the 1800s, stand up and shake hands with people I don't know and sit through a Children's Hour without squirming.

I don't like every thing about that other guy's religion either ... because I'm not into a prosperity gospel, waving my hands over my head, or rolling around the floor and speaking in tongues. But that's OK, because you'd probably find things in "my religion" that you don't like, either.

Well, I don't like ketchup on my hamburgers ... but I'm not gonna label you a heretic if loving ketchup on your Whopper happens to be your choice. And I'm not about to condemn another church just because "their" music isn't "my" church music.

When believers gather as a church to praise and worship God, He's the only focus.

Not praising organ music, Sunday School, stained glass windows, suits and ties or worshiping "our" religion. Only Him.

What you, I, or people the generation before us liked ought not to have anything to do with it.


Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

- James 1:27