The role of religion

In his Dec 20 devotional entry in For the Love of God vol 2, D.A. Carson asks the following three questions regarding our religion:

1) Is our religion for us or for God?

2) Does our religion elevate ritual above morality?

3) Does our religion prompt us to passionately follow God's words or pursue our own religious agendas?

You can read the full entry here.

I share these questions for two reasons.  First is that they resonate in me as questions we each should be asking about whatever our religious activity. Preaching, singing, leading, giving, encouraging, serving or anything else done in the name of Christ should periodically be run through some version of these three questions.

In addition to this, I see embedded in these questions the religious heritage of my youth. Religion may have ultimately been about God, but it was more about how to make myself right before him or how to keep myself "synced up". Morality have have been the stated goal, but it was lost in the method of getting there. Truly the forest was lost for the trees. The result was that there was no passion, there was no relationship, there was no devotion. Religion was a machine, not unlike the IRS. Do it right, you get your refund. Do it wrong and you get an audit and you may even have to pay back taxes or go to jail.

My prayer and my hope is that our personal and corporate religion does revert back to that. Unfortunately, I think that is the direction of the human heart apart from the intervening grace of God. So examine your approach to religion. Apply the three tests that come out of Zec 7 and ask God to do a reformation in own personal religious world. And while your at it, pray for our churches as well. Atrophy is only one generation away.

I now send forth this post with a deep sense of its many defects; but with an earnest prayer that it may do some good. (JC Ryle)

To God Alone be the Glory