Religion’s Downfall — http://thegodjourney.com/2011/05/20/religions-downfall/

It's now time to think outside the box of what we've always known. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the sovereign Lord. I think that's a profound turning point in somebody's relationship with God. And our hope in starting this was that this would become an ever-expanding conversation. Just two real guys talking about life. That's a nice tagline. I'm Wayne Jacobson. And I'm Brad Cummings. And welcome to another edition of The God Journey. So you got your rapture bags packed? Well, I guess this is the last podcast, isn't it? Wait, it could be. I mean, most people may not even get to listen to this one. Oh, yeah, it may not. No, it's not. They'll be down home by Saturday. Do you think they can listen to it in heaven? No. Will it be on the rapture bus flight? I'm sure it will. It's going to make that cut. You know what really is a bummer? It's my wife's birthday on the 23rd. She's going to miss one. Well, it could happen. Or celebrate it in eternity. You know, I hadn't thought about that. Will my gift get there? If you're holding on to it at the precise moment of transport. See, I haven't really... At least on Star Trek, if you were holding it, it got there. That's true. Is this, are we beaming up? Sort of. Sort of. Sort of like that. You know, I really have never thought the rapture three. So are you waking up on Saturday with great... Are you clearing things on the deck so Saturday's just a free day? No, you know, it just seems... You're not buying this? Not really. It's really kind of not consistent with a lot of the other nudgings I have. And so it's like either... Either I'm going to get saved in the tribulation. Oh, you don't think you'll go if you don't believe in it? No, because... I'm off working coming Saturday. If he comes Saturday, I'm good with that. You know, I suppose that's fine. I still got other stuff to do. When will he ever come where you wouldn't have other stuff to do? You know, that's... No, no. I think as we look at my life, no, that's probably true. I probably should sort of rethink some of that. And do Jesus say the faithful servants are those who are just doing what they're doing when he comes? Yeah. So I think he's going to interrupt us. I don't think there's a snowball chance in a very hot place at Saturday. Oh, you don't believe in the hot place? I believe in the hot place. I don't think there's a snowball chance in a hot place. Rob, I would so appreciate that because you haven't named something that didn't exist. I think the dumbest people on the planet buy dates like this. Suggest them. And then people who believe them spend thousands of... I'll probably put it on credit cards on the billboards. I put that on my credit card if I thought I was going to be gone. You know, there was a crazy ass driving yesterday and all of a sudden I got this radio hat. And it is these people. These people. That's what I see. I'm sorry. I try to be generous to all kinds of deceived people, but I'm telling you what. I'm sorry. Well, I don't know what I mean, but it's those people. These people, whatever. The rapture crowd. It was ominous music. It was fear inducing. It was well produced. It was a great 30-second commercial. I thought it was somebody making fun of them. I bet they're doing this all on credit cards because they're not expecting to pay for it. Boy, the shock's going to be a month from now. Maybe that is what begins the tribulation. All the folks that are leaving rack up a whole bunch of bills left for everyone else. Then they get mad, and that's why you never experienced such anger before. Or maybe it's those people here after a month that are so angry they've got to pay off their debt. They start the tribulation. You've got this covered on both that list. In fact, they already are. Oh, gosh. If Jesus Christ could stand on the moment of His ascension and say, even the Son of Man does not know the day or the hour. I mean, yes, some day He's coming. I'm all good with that. If it's Saturday, I'm all good with that. But I'm thinking He's not coming. I'm thinking of God had even planned to come Saturday. He's going to move it a day or two. Just for that nonsense, not to be right. I have lived through at least 27, I think. Are these scheduled raptures? Yeah. I mean, I was afraid as a young boy I was never going to get married before Jesus came. So the rapture is going to happen before I got out of college. I'm like, come on, man, that's not right. I want to be married. Give me at least a week, a year, something. That gives new meaning to turn a bird. It does. I turned a bird. Anyway. I don't know what to do. I mean, I don't know any of these people. Is these people right to say that? That's not derogatory. Not if there's no racial component to them. I think it's fine. There's these people and I have no idea what color they are. I think they're mostly white. The ones I've seen are mostly white. Don't say where they live, right? Incredibly gullible. Don't go there. They're really? It's not our kids over there. We're supposed to go there. Okay, I don't know. I don't know either. I don't know. It could be Chicago. It could be. Lots of crap. There's no radio in LA, okay? Yeah. But here you got these people that are absolutely definite. And it's like they're declaring the date. They're living their life. We made no plans for life after years. Golly, what happens on the backside? Should the bus not show up? I really just... Well, if any of those people want to give me all their stuff on Friday, I will put it to use in Kenya making an orphanage out of it. I miss going someplace compassion. I'm sorry. I intrude yet again. No. But I look at that, and it's like, okay, they're absolutely convinced. They've lived life, you know. Wow. What happens then? And where do you go then? Because that's not like a minor, you know. They put all their eggs in that basket. And you're just going like, oh gosh. You know, they're not the first ones. No, they're not. And they'll come out on the other side some very bitter that they were deceived by somebody. That will be true. But they'll go on. And you know what? This guy who's declared this date to be exactly 7,000 years from the flood and the date of Jesus' return, he's already done this once and then has recomputed since he got past the date. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Just like the guy 88 reasons Jesus was coming in 88, best-selling book, and then sold 89 reasons coming in 89. Oh, no. Yeah, I'm serious. Dead serious. And now he's retired on a farm somewhere, I guess. And this will leave a lot of... I've got to feel sorry for people who get so sucked into this. I mean, they just listen to this guy, bought into the whole deal, have structured their lives around a Saturday coming. I just... I wonder what happened Saturday night about 11.58. Yeah, I mean, that's just a little bizarre. You know what's so weird? The way I read the book of Revelation, there's still some folks on the playing field that are part of God's team. When all this goes down, you just go like, golly, I mean, I do have a hard time reading that and concluding. Oh, we're just all exempt from difficulty. Well, yeah, I get to preach here, post-trib, mid-trib, trip-trib, trip-trib stuff. And I really... I don't think you can make any case for believers being raptured out of this world before all the trouble comes. I still think you can. I mean, Jesus said, in this life, you will have trouble. But you know what? The last seven years, maybe it's been tribulation. You don't talk about it. There's been moments where I've thought you will just be it for me. And you got people in other parts of the world, Zimbabwe, and numerous other places where I'm sure it has felt exactly like that. I'm sure they would go with a big, big, big rapture on Saturday at the end of the age. They said the end of the age isn't for another six months, so I didn't get that. I haven't read the literature. Oh, cool. I still have some things to get done, so... I'm going to ask if I can stay to get some things done because I think they're important. Well, I'm not doing any more writing till Sunday. Just in case. If I can't publish it by Saturday, I'm not writing it. Man, this is a hard deadline. I'm not going to make it. No one's here to read it, so I mess with it. So I'm partying the next couple of days, getting down, playing a little golf, having fun. There you go. Friday, Friday. Oh, boy. Time to get down on Friday. Thank God it's Friday and thank God it's the rapture. If so, we'll find out. Yeah, I... Not too hopeful. Weird, weird, weird theology out there. Yeah, there it is. Well, hey, you were in Indiana and you, like, taught everyone how to read the Bible correctly. Everyone. Everyone. Everyone. Anyone ask you how it went? It went beyond your wildest imaginations, so I'm going to report. This is 40 years of my life studying scripture and the last two years preparing to do this. So I was pretty, one, too much stuff in my head. Way too much stuff in my head. Way was full. Lots of notes, PowerPoint presentations, and to make it worse, I love conversations with people in the living room. Very difficult to do lectures in a studio with bright lights in your face and makeup on. Brutal. Yeah, that's not exactly your... Plus they're putting your makeup on, not in the back room, right in front of God and everybody sitting there. The pictures were taken, I mean it's rightful. Did they powder your nose? A little bit, a little bit of powder. Did you have a little bit of suntan? I sweat a little bit, you know. Yeah. I went for the Fernando Lamas look. Very dark. I'm kidding. I'll say this, the people we had were fabulous. We had a studio audience do all three of these tapings. We did three hours at a shot, a lot of time to sit through under bright lights. We had Q&A times, good question answer to kind of help people flesh out some of what I was sharing. And yeah, I always think of things I wish I could have. That's what I like about writing. You can edit to the last minute. When you do podcasts and you do video, it's done. Oops, there it goes. It is a moment in time, literally. And if you forget something or don't say it quite the right way or missed a good joke, you just missed it. But overall, I just, it was beyond my wildest expectations for sure, the way it all sorted out. What would you want? I mean, what's the summary that you're hoping will come out of that? I'm hoping people will see one consistent God through the whole of the Bible. And the Bible is an unfolding story of who God is. So that there are moments in the Old Testament where they're just the perceptions of the writer, not necessarily the reality of God. And I think Scripture demonstrates that itself. There's what I called in this thing a revelational flow of Scripture. So you've got God allegedly stoning Sodom and Gomorrah with fire stones from heaven. And you've got Jesus. So we see God as, well, God's the fire thrower. And then when James and John suggest it to Jesus in the Samaritan, she says, you don't know what spirit you're of. And he distances himself and Father from a moment like that. So then it takes us back to the Old Testament and says, what's really going on here? Is this defining the nature of God as many people think it is? Or may it be moments God had to act in history for super big reasons of his unfolding purpose and not necessarily definitions of his character? So it was to take people through that whole story of Scripture. Start with the Gospels and Jesus and how to read, it's kind of a Luke 24 approach, how to read the Scriptures through the eyes of Jesus when he's taken the Emmaus guys back to the whole of Scripture to show how he was being revealed in every step of it. And to see the Old Testament, the analogy we used was like an abused dog, like Ole Roy, we talked about a few weeks ago. How do you get that dog who's offended, hurt, and abused and blames humanity, in his case, for what humanity really did. In our case, we're blaming God for what we did. And how does God woo us back into that circle and seeing the Old Testament as that wooing us back into the house? Yes, there's some incredibly intimate moments that just go like, gosh, if your little stereotype of the Old Testament as just the angry God looking to fry people, no, you've missed some incredible moments in there that would say, that is not him. Oh, and very instructive. And even in the Old Testament itself, God gives sacrifices, but David says that God doesn't want them. And Isaiah says God hates them. So what does that say? Did he give sacrifices because they really counted with God? Or did he give them sacrifices because in the climate they were in, they needed some kind of religious construct to keep them focused on God, the real God, rather than all the false gods? Well, yeah, there's a journey of taking a people where they're at in an unfolding revelation of who he is. And I think when you don't see that, when someone just lifts a verse out of that progressive unfolding, unveiling of who he is, you're just going like, the capacity for misinterpretation is profound. Yeah, and what I love is just the conversations I had with people before, after, during, people that just have came who just have given up on Scripture. But they came anyway, just to find out what I just really said. You know, I'm going to know Jesus by the Holy Spirit, but Scriptures do confusing. Either God got saved between Malachi and Matthew or I don't know how to read the stuff, and just giving up. And people come in the second day saying, gosh, I read the Book of Mark last night, I read parts of the Book of Mark in a whole different light. I read Isaiah, saw things about God's love and tenderness in Isaiah that I never saw before. So the immediate feedback was awesome from those that were there, and I know people are excited. We're going to get the audio out probably a lot sooner than we'll get the video out, but that'll be over on the livestream side. I'm sure we'll mention it here when we get there. We'll probably release the audio pretty much like a podcast kind of thing where we're not going to put all a session or two. There's 24 approximate 20-minute sections. Oh, awesome. And then we're going to do some things with Q&A on the website to help people kind of process what they're going to be hearing. I'm hoping this becomes a tool for people to really look at Scripture differently and look at Scripture more consistently and find there is no conflict between the Jesus of Scripture and the God of the Old Testament. There is no conflict. The conflict's in our head and in our misinterpretation and I don't think the whole lens of religion hasn't exactly helped us see what's going on there. And so I understand people are strange, but I'm just going, hey, I don't get it. But I think God, very God is unveiled very clearly in who Jesus is. Yeah, for sure. And I know we've had some technical difficulties of late on the podcast. Can you all hear us both? We're keeping a better eye on things and hopefully we've taken care of the little technological demon that's gotten into our work. I exercised it. So we apologize for those that are a little tough to listen to back there, but they are what they are. K. Sera Sera Well, we have not had a good experience retaping things and trying capturing the same spirit. So the fact that I drop out for a few comments is not reason enough to either throw them away or throw them away. So they are what they are. And you know what? You just listened to Brad through those moments because he's waxing eloquent, I'm sure. I ran into a great, great quote from Eugene Peterson. Didn't know if you'd want to talk about this. Lay it on me, brother. Well, he endorsed Rob Bell's book and he said it isn't easy to develop a biblical imagination that takes in the comprehensive and eternal work of Christ. It's a great mentality without compromising an inch of evangelical conviction. And we know Eugene Peterson endorsements are helpful. We've experienced that. But since he's done it, he's been attacked by all kinds of people who attacked Rob Bell and then attacked Eugene Peterson. And he had some interesting comments in an interview he did with a man named Timothy Dowrymple. I guess that's how you say it. He asked him, what are your thoughts about Bob Bell's book and the controversy he ignited? What inspired you to endorse the book? And his answer was, Rob Bell and anyone else who's baptized my brother or sister. We have different ways of looking at things, but we are all part of the kingdom of God. He's more generous than I am. I'm not sure everybody's been baptized. I kind of hope people are learning to follow Jesus as their father. Jesus is their lord and father is their father. But anyway, I don't think that brothers in the kingdom of God should fight. I think that's bad family manners. I like that point. Don't you? Yes, I do. I'm laughing because it's just never happened. No, it's never. He's just going like, wow, our propensity to take up swords and whack each other's profound. He says, I don't agree with everything Rob Bell says, but I think they're worth saying. There's a voice into the whole evangelical world, which if people will listen to it, will put you on your guard against judging people too quickly, making rapid dogmatic judgments on people. I don't like it when people use hell and the wrath of God as weaponry against one another. Amen. I knew that people would jump on me for writing endorsement. I wrote the endorsement because I would like people to listen to him. He may not be right, but he's doing something worth doing. There's so much polarization in the evangelical church that it's a true scandal. We've got to learn how to talk to each other and listen to each other in a civil way. I like that. Why in the world would you reduce all dialogue down to just what agrees with me? How are you going to change? How are you going to grow? I love when people pose questions that I might go like, I don't know that I follow that to the same conclusion they did. But there's some great questions. I mean, I at least love what they're struggling with. I don't know that I would draw the same conclusions. But I go, this is not an invalid question to consider. And it's not scary to consider other thought. The idea that truth is so fragile and so small that to consider other thoughts and think them through is dangerous and horrible and we must crucify people. But he gets better in what he says about this thing. He says, so do we then juggles need to examine their doctrines of hell and damnation? And he responds, yes, I guess I do think they need to examine it out to be a good bit more biblical not taking things out of context. But the people who are against Rob Bell are not going to reexamine anything. They have a litmus test for who is a Christian and who is not. But that's not what it means to live in community. Luther said we should read the entire Bible in terms of what he lives toward Christ. Everything has to be interpreted through him. Well, if you do that, you're going to end up with this religion of grace and forgiveness. The only people Jesus threatens are the Pharisees. But everybody else gets generous treatment. There's very little Christ, very little Jesus in those people who are fighting Rob Bell. Yeah, no, I think the spirit behind the attack. Because even Jesus is getting a little ticked with the Pharisees. You know what? That's the same heart that rescues the women caught in adultery. I don't think he is all honking mad and behaving inconsistent with the heart that he has. I think he looks at the Pharisees as lost. And the doctrine police who are the ones treating people lying about it. I've read stuff on websites about me that people just totally made up. Yeah, totally made it up. No, just because they want to discredit somebody. And I think their own discredit is not the lies they tell. What ought to discredit them from the beginning is the attitude and ranker and judgment and viciousness that they demonstrate in the way they talk about things. When people are yelling and screaming and they have a little pulpit on their little videos, you've got to say what's wrong about his view of God that leaves him that angry and that distorted. That reflects who Jesus was. That reflects the older brother in the prodigal. He is not like the father at all. Even if they are, and I don't think they are, even if they were right on the theological points where Paul says knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If I'm just pushing truth on people, and when you look at these people that have no gentleness in their heart, no love, no kindness, and I think a lot of that is driven by the fact they have a great fear that truth is easily undermined by lies. And they don't have a sense that if you're really right about what you're saying about who Jesus is, Jesus can make his case just fine. Truth thrives. It's the lies and the manipulation of people that the Pharisees were holding in their pocket that you have to be afraid of that you could overturn those things. And that just drives these kind of people nuts. And I don't, you know, some of them I'm willing to accept as my brother and sister. I hope they know the Jesus I know. No, wait a minute. It's not the same ring of... I'm not going to decide someone does or doesn't based on the theological holding. No, see, yeah. But I do want to look at someone's life and say, man, is there love and grace coming from this life? Does this life reflect the spirit of Jesus or does it reflect the Pharisees? Yeah, you can have all the right quote, doctrine and conclusions but if it doesn't touch your heart and it doesn't change the way in which you love people, I don't think when we get to heaven it's going to sit down and have our, you know, our SAT of doctrine. And, you know, if you pass, well, you're in. If not, well, maybe there's purgatory something. I think the reality is have we learned to love like Jesus? You know, can I love my enemy? That's... That's someone that disagrees with me but that's a heart that has been transformed. Can I forgive someone who has wronged me? That's a big development of Jesus in my soul. Those are the more weightier matters of transformation that I'm going like, gosh, if all you do is argue with those that disagree with you, how much of that's penetrating? And lie and deceive. One of these Neo-Calvinus major spokesman guy, he writes a letter to me and he offers to write the definitive Shack study guide to unpack the truth of the Shack. I'd already seen online he'd written this little booklet about, you know, the Shack being this horrible, heretical, whatever, and I wrote back and said... Seriously, how disingenuous are you that you would try to completely sandbag me? Do you see people who use lies and use manipulative things to further their thing? You may know Jesus, but a little bit. Really, I think you're following Calvin more than you're following Jesus and I think you're following your own angry interpretation of Calvin which is a long way from the spirit and life of Jesus. You know the one character I look for in people that I know I will enjoy the most? Humility. When someone has that, they may have a lot of profound wisdom, but they're not going to whip it out like a sword and destroy someone. They're going to lovingly share it where they feel there's an open door. I think there really is a profound lack of wisdom in getting into the religious arguments. I don't know how many sermons I preach where you're just dread at the end of the line. The religious spirits that line up that just want to get into it. Just like, really? And it's so exhausting, isn't it? Oh, I mean, yeah, you have to have incredible fortitude to work through that to a place of trying to find some love and grace and just say hey, you know what, okay, thank you. If I'm wrong, help me. I want to know. I don't want to not be challenged, but the spirit in which that comes is a real profound indicator. Didn't Jesus show us that you can share an awful lot of truth in love that makes people even angry and threatened without being angry and threatened yourself? Yeah. You can just drop in a nugget of you know what? Have you ever thought? He that wants to be first can be last. What? Oh boy. When you've waited the front of the line, that's pretty scary stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So I just I I appreciated hats off to Eugene. He is hard here and I really appreciate him saying that brothers and system in the kingdom shouldn't fight. And I, gee, that's a dream I've had my whole life. I can't imagine there's not any brother or sister I couldn't sit down with, have a discussion, get to a conclusion that would be mutually a blessing until people decide they want something sinister and are going to lie and fight you for it and there's nothing you can do. And I just I've been a part of enough things where brothers got separate on this journey over theology or over I want to control the power that be. I need to have power over you. It really makes me sick. I yearn for a day and I yearn for the space I live in and I get to for the most part of my life. I get to live alongside people who we see things differently can have honest great conversations about it and keep being brothers and keep the glory of God unfolding that none of us know perfectly and at the end of the day he's going to get the final word anyway and that's what I hope for. I hope there's a lot more of that in the body of Christ. Hear, hear. And I want to read you something. This is not really part of that same it could be. Someone sent me this book The Parables of Grace by Robert Farrar Capone. Our Capon. I don't know if he's a friend of Al Capone or relative. I have no idea. But what I love about this is from his book The Parables of Grace. And I've read a previous one. We talked about some of his previous things. The Parables of Kingdom and I quoted his stuff on there. He's an Episcopal priest and he writes this stuff and when a guy on the inside of that kind of religious entity can write the stuff he's writing I'm going, gee, I have brothers and sisters everywhere on the planet. No doubt my mind. Here's what he said. The entire human race is profoundly and desperately religious in the present day. There is not a man, woman or child of us who has ever been immune from the temptation to think that the relationship between God and humanity can be repaired from our side by our efforts. Are they good? Wow. Whether these efforts involve creedal correctness cultic performances or ethical achievements or whether they amount to a little more than crassly superstitious behavior like Jesus is coming on May 21 committed to them. If we are not convinced that God can be conned into being favorable to us by dint of our doctrinal orthodoxy or chicken sacrifices or the gridding of our moral teeth, we still have a hard time shaking the belief that stepping over sidewalk cracks or hanging up the bathhouse so the labor won't show. Well somehow render the ruler of the universe kind-hearted, soft-headed or both. I like this guy. I don't you. I do. But as the guy pointed out long ago all such behavior is bunk. That is a good Hebrew word. It is a good Hebrew word. The blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins nor can any other religious act do what it sets out to do. Either it is ineffective for its purpose or the supposedly effective intellectual spiritual or moral uprightness it counts on to do the job is simply unavailable. The point is we haven't got a card in hand that can take even a single trick against God. I love that. That's someone who rightly understands. Religion therefore despite the correctness of its insistence that something needs to be done about our relationship with God remains unqualified bad news. It traps us in a game where we will always and everywhere lose. But the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is precisely good news. It is the announcement in the death direction of Jesus that God has simply called off the game. That he has taken all of the disasters religion was trying to remedy and without any recourse to religion at all set them to rights by himself. How sad then that the church acts as if it is in the religious religion business rather than in the gospel proclaiming business. What a disservice not only to itself but to a world perpetually sinking in the quagmire of religiosity when it harps on creed, cult conduct as the such tones of salvation. What a perversion of the truth that sets us free when it takes the news that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us and turns it into a proclamation of God as just one more insufferable bookkeeper. Wow! That's a way to wake up in the morning reading that little bit and I went hallelujah an episcopal guy gets it. And a priest no less. And summarizing it is we have this religious bone that is trying to somehow I'm going to fix it from my end versus just the broken harder reality that I can. That is that's the river going two different directions. That is a profound clear summary of so much because I do think so much of where we get all tied up in knots it really is our taking a posture trying to fix it from our end. Yeah and for those people that want to blame religion for that I love that he puts it no it's in use. It's offering you the way to do that but the fact that you want to do that is stemming from that inherent sense of sin and shame that says I have violated God and I've got to make right I've got to do something to earn my way back in. And religion just provides the mechanism for you to do that and then you find the least defensive one you can find or the least insufferable and you try to make it work for yourself and when it doesn't you're so surprised and you're angry at religion and the fact is Jesus came to set us free from all of that there's a freedom in him that isn't based on. And even our anger towards the wrong direction. Yeah even toward religion yeah. It's like you know I just I'm like you know what yeah no that road doesn't work but I don't want the rest of my life standing at the trailhead decrying the inefficiency of that road. It's like you know walk down the other way with Jesus. Lord come get me. Or even try to beat up that other way of thinking are you going to beat it up? People are in it because there's a need they have in their soul that has yet to be met by Christ tear down their religious thing. And they will be upset with you. We haven't gained anything. Until we live in such a way in the world that Christ becomes the endearing draw and that people realize there's nothing I can do to make me fit with God. He has already done it. And I just get to live in him now and live in that reality. And I think what becomes compelling to people lost in religion is people around them who live in freedom and life and are not badgering them and pushing at their religion. Some people start scratching their heads and going man I want what he's drinking. You know why that is so incredibly valuable to sort of just recognize that I can't do a single thing that's going to make this work. That is such a leg sweep to your pride. I mean that is a doorway to real humility that just says you know what I can respond to the grace that he gives and that's great but that's still on his side and that's something in me. I don't have to go I did this and I did this and it's like all of that tends to be the knee jerk of religion going I need to justify something so as to establish my worth if only to convince myself. Yeah, you know it's like I don't need anyone else to have a religious problem. For me, the challenge in the human soul of just going you know what I don't get my value by trying to come up with it. I get it because I'm loved and when that becomes clear that is someone like just finally flipping open the window pane allowing fresh air to come back in my soul work it's like I have value I don't have to prove it I didn't get it from what I did therefore I'm not really going to lose it The security that comes when you just go I'm not walking down that road anymore I'm not going to pick up those tools and try to work them to the end of some system I'm just going to sit here and say I accept the fact that you created me and you love me period. And it's amazing that the three things he points to saying this is where religion makes itself known in you one of three things Cretal correctness you must believe the right thing Cultic performances which most of us are going to miss what that is that's just the rituals of religion that's I got to go to a meeting and Don't trip on the word culture Or I've got to have my quiet time every day or it's whatever I do this doing I've been a quote unquote worship service which is a bad name for that or I'm in a quiet time with my thing or I'm in a Bible study with people that any cultic performance and the last one was there any ethical achievements I just think that covers the whole I got to live to a certain standard this is the sign what amazes me when it goes on to say Hebrews totally disarmed all of that and yet post Hebrews the church of Jesus Christ in the world recreated all of those in a different climate now we have this Christian cradle necessity Christian cultic performance and Christian ethical achievements and we're right back in the same pool of religiosity that Jesus came to say no no no no no I'm not like that father's not like that you're not good enough and you're loved more than that so let's fix it in him you don't need to do that I mean I think that's the real fuel that ends up firing the inside of human beings is when you get touched by the reality of God's love that honestly changes everything I have now a resource with which to love other people whereas before gritting my teeth wasn't really coming across quite as convincingly no pretending to love people and loving people is the same thing I didn't know that through 40 years of my life I was thinking wow as long as I'm pretending to do it or choosing and still pretending I love you with the love of the Lord I don't like you but I love you with uh yeah see that's where I just go like you know unless I get touched by that love first I really don't have a whole lot that is going to be enduring to give to anybody but as soon as that touches me guess what I'm no longer stuck on self which is really where most all the poisonous streams come from which is why as Eugene Peterson says why we can't seem to get along without fighting because when creedal correctness cultic performances and ethical achievements are your goal we'll fight forever about what those are that really count I don't know I might have to read this sweet at least I'd hang out with this brother you know how goofy it is why are we surprised from someone within one of those ranks thinks this God's got folks just about everywhere on all sides in all shapes and colors that do know him I agree and I just go like myself more and more just going you know what there are some awesome people all over the place and I don't know who they are but it's fun to bump into them who get it but even still I was a little surprised I did my little hallelujah dismount after my rejoicing dance going wow I love the fact that a guy who's inside something that I would consider is a lot about cultic performance I mean I would yeah but he's and he may still be doing some of those but he's doing them with a very different liberty he's not doing them like we don't do this God's not going to accept this and God's not going to bless this and God's not going to be in our life he does what he does to celebrate the relationship he obviously is having with this incredible the reality is those three things that we can really get messed up with they're not wrong they could just be done on a worthless direction or they become your means to attain a relationship exactly and as a means to express your relationship with him that's growing and deep I got no problem with that stuff I think it will take expression I think you'll come to grips with truth I think you'll find some ways to live it out that are real and I do think ethically you'll become a more stable human being less inclined to lie and cheat and steal and do things that hurt people for fun or profit thank you for traveling with us on The God Journey you can be part of the conversation by visiting our website thegodjourney.com