The Power of Words: Religious

“Are you religious?”

I crossed my arms against the cold and frowned in thought.  I had stepped outside the party to continue my conversation with a small group of smokers.  We had been discussing the writing of one of my classmates.  He had crafted a series of poems describing the trials and love life from high school on to present day.  Smiling sadly in remembrance, as I recalled what my own high school was like.  “If you believed everything you heard through the grapevine, you would think I had lost my virginity in high school.  Twice.  When in fact,” I bragged, "I remained a virgin until my wedding night.”

The two smokers I was talking with commended me on this, which I found both encouraging and amusing.  It’s good to know that abstinence is respected later in life, even as it was socially frowned upon as a teenager.  My amusement came from an assumption of their religious beliefs.  Chances were at least one of them wasn’t a Christian, and I was somewhat surprised to hear that non-religious people were in some sort of agreement with the sanctity of marriage.  My comment had, unwittingly, steered the conversation in another direction.

I don’t know how to respond to “are you religious”.  I am a child of God, repented of my sins, and placed my faith in Him to grant me everlasting life.  In that sense, as a practitioner of religion, I am “religious”.  But to wholeheartedly claim the title without explanation can be dangerous.  Hundreds upon thousands of people have committed heinous crimes in the name of the christian Lord.  Those who led the crusades and the Spanish Inquisition likely thought of themselves as highly religious people.  To accept the label “religious” would subconsciously put me among their ranks.  Terrible things happen in the world of organized religion because, no matter what your ranking in the church, humans are fallible.

Greg Stier has perhaps my favorite response to the question.  I heard it first when he was speaking at a Dare to Share event in Lincoln, with a stadium packed full of other Christian youth.  He told a story of a time when he was doing street evangelism with his youth group at a local mall, and was approached by a scary looking man.  Having seen what Greg and his group was doing, he looked Greg up and down and stared him in the eye.  “You religious?”  Greg shook his head.  “No man, I hate religious people.”  Surprised to find themselves in agreement, they continued bashing the religious.  They both hated how religious people think they’re better than everyone else, and judge people before they know them instead of accepting people for who they are.

Looking back, I realized that the colloquial use of “religious” doesn’t match up with the definition those inside the faith understand it to be.  To the secular masses, “religious” does not mean of or pertaining to religion: it means that you see yourself as holier that your fellow man.  As a Christian, I’ll be the first to tell you: the vast majority of us hate “religious” people.  They feel that being a child of God somehow grants them a special status here on earth, and think that they should be respected at all times and in all places because of it.  But that isn’t the teaching of God.  In Matthew 23:12, Jesus said, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”    (English Standard Version).  A true Christian, and someone I would consider religious, would instead live by the words that the apostle Paul says in his letter to the Galatians, where he writes, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23, ESV).

It pains me to see and know what things have been and are currently being done in the name of my Lord.  It hurts me whenever I hear stories about “Christians” trying to publicly shame people for their sexual orientation, or picketing the funeral of a soldier (Insider Tip: NO Christian acknowledges the Westboro Baptists as a “church”).  Of course, to the media, bad news is good news, so these are the stories that non-Christians both hear and remember.  But knowing of these atrocities, from the attacks on those unlike them to the haughty looks they give passerby, strengthens my resolve to do good in Christ’s name.  It’s a lifetime of work, but, in my eyes, there is no greater thing I could do with my time.

So when you hear the word “religious”, I encourage you to stop and think.  Is the speaker referring to something that pertains to religion, or are they attempting (consciously or unconsciously) to tear down the good name of Christ through the embarrassing acts of his followers?