Bordering on religious behaviour....

Warning: This blog entry is not necessarily for the religious, but it is impossible for anyone who reads it to be any other way inclined.
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Now if you got that, I just gotta rate you. If not, read on :)

I have a problem. My problem is namely, all this talk I'm hearing nowadays about I love Christ, I love God but I hate religion (and please hear me out before you put me in a bracket).

Now the other day I was sitting in a barbershop, watching final score and the game had just finished at Old Trafford. They showed the after match scene: Players shook hands, some embraced one another and the crowd filed out of the stadium. I thought 'Man, this is church for them', and it suddenly hit me. What I said was absolutely 100% right. Every year the new kits come out and the season tickets are bought. Every week stadiums are packed to the rafters, fans giving their chants and waiting for their team to do 'em proud. Some of these men haven't stepped foot in a 'religious building' since their teens, but week after week they give their heart and soul to lifting up their team. This is their religion.

Switch to a man that wakes up every day at 7am (sorry, this ain't me as many of you have gathered), shuffles on his shoes, sprays himself up with some reasonable deodorant and gets in the car on his way to work. He reaches in at 8:10 and spends the rest of the day at this desk doing what he needs to do to make ends meet. Though he doesn't know it, this can easily become his religion. Throw it back to a lady, single, free, spends her Saturday afternoons in Birmingham town centre looking for any new deal she can find. Often she comes home with a pair of new jeans. Some weeks it's a new pair of shoes or trainers. She's got 'nuff stuff in her wardrobe and all over the bedroom floor, but she just wants something new. So every week she goes back. Sadly this has become her religion. 

You get the picture. Whether it's the family that sit around their TV every Friday or Saturday night for X Factor, or that man that goes out to sell his weed consistently even in the freezing cold, we all have our religious practices. Now we get to the point. What is religion?

If you're a dictionary man, religion can be a particular system of faith and worship, but also can be a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.

If you're a Bible reader man, the word religion may not come up much in the scriptures, but when it does it speak of an act of ritual worship or reverence.

A long time ago someone said to me (and I paraphrase), 'If Jesus isn't your Lord, you're gonna be a slave to something else. Now that something maybe your TV, your job or your woman. It may be a football team. It might even be your ego. But it will be something, whether you like it or not'.

I agree with that. And I'm religious I admit that, but I'm seeking after that pure religion. I don't agree with the statement 'Christianity is a relationship with Jesus Christ, not a religion'. That's all too easy.  I believe personally to follow God, you need to create time. You need to create time to commune with him and to do what he's requiring of you. Some of it may be random, true, but a lot of it will be deliberate, or a series of situations made for 'ritual worship or reverence'. Like when you wake up in the morning and praise him before you do anything else. When you go to sleep at night. When you meet with other Christians and so on. 

There is bad, impure and dead religious acts which some people propagate and I don't agree with that. Putting structures and programs before people. Holding to the form without the power. This I believe, is all a result of tradition gone mad, hearts seeking to destroy people for not doing what they do, judgmentalism, inferiority complexes, prides and generally sinful stuff. But there is that pure religion which never seems to grow cold or lose it's spark in God's eyes. Let's be religious, but let's do it right.

'Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you'.

- James 1:27