say what?

I hate religion. No, seriously. I hate religion.

And that hatred is completely biblical. Jesus reserved his harshest words for the religious, for the full-time ministers, for the theologians, for the rabbis, the teachers and preachers of the day, because Jesus hates religion. And if he hates religion, then I do as well.

Ok, obviously I'm not saying I hate Christianity. I love this life that God has called me to live, and many of the traditions and things that God has taught his people throughout time has been continually passed down and renewed and reused as the Spirit of God leads. What I am saying, however, is that I hate when those traditions and ways become the focus of ministry or of our Christian lives and not the God that initiated them in the first place.

A couple things about religion that really get to me:
1. Holier than thou:
One thing I dislike is when we take the religious language of the day, and instead of using it to praise and give glory to God, we instead use it to make ourselves look better. To make ourselves look more holy, more esteemed, and more righteous in our own skin than we actually are. The Pharisees were really good at this, and Jesus had no problem calling them out on it (Matthew 15:8-9). Jesus called them "white washed tombs," dead inside, but so lavish, so beautiful on the outside. But it's no different today. We sit there with our easily crafted language, that we've picked up from days and months and years of sitting in a congregation, and we use it to create a wall of deception. It's that person sitting infront of you that when everyone else shares about their brokenness, their struggles, their challenges, and what God is speaking to them deep in their spirit, instead of opening themselves up as well, opts to either turn to one of two approaches (i'm gonna use football terms):

1) the hail mary (no pun intended) - this is a play at the end of a game where the losing team seeks to throw the ball as far as possible, in the hopes that someone on their team will catch the ball. Usually the ball gets knocked down, and they end up losing the game. The same thing happens when people get caught being religious - They go for the long-shot, pretty much an impossibility - they use this time of sharing as an opportunity to talk about they haven't had a struggle or that there is nothing that God is challenging them in (impossible), and then they go for the 70 yard bomb by telling everyone else how they can do better, which essentially is saying "you can be like me," not "God's making you more like Him."

2) the flea flicker/misdirection play - a classic, this is when the team with the ball confuses the other team by passing the ball off multiple times to other players, with the hopes of leaving the person who actually has the ball wide open to score a touchdown. Same thing happens when religious people get all holier than thou: they go to the tried-and-true misdirection play. You had asked them how they were doing, they respond with how their friends are doing. You ask them if they've been reading their Bible, they respond with how the guy at the McDonalds cut them off in line, and how they really need to forgive them. So frustrating and angry-making (yes, I made up a word).

2. This Jesus thing is a 9 to 5.
I think this one is the most infuriating. It's one thing to try and cover up. But the worst thing about religion is that it takes the grace of our God and reduces it to nothing. It takes Christ, who sacrificed Himself on the cross of Calvary, humbling himself taking on the form of a servant (Phil 2:6-7), it takes his amazing, unconditional love and turns it to a works-based, I must-do-this better, I must-do-more of this and less-of-this life. THE CROSS IS COMPLETE. Jesus died not to cover just one sin, but all. All means all.

I don't think I can convey how infuriating this is, so watch this clip. I think the same burden is upon Driscoll: