I find this meme, that "God hates religion", to be tired and near-sighted. However, I can sympathize with it. I preached it myself for years. I used to say that Jesus tore down the veil between us and God, and then religion puts it back up. However, I don't believe this anymore.
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This is a good "thing". Other
creatures don't do this. |
Religion is simply a part of our human capacity. God made us as
religious creatures. He also made us to live in community. Considering both aspects of the human person (religious and social), institutions are the natural extensions of the way we preserve what is good, true, and beautiful in our communal life of worshiping God.
Religion without Christ is neither to be disdained nor praised. It is simply humans being human, and should be admired as a part of our human capacity -- something distinct from all other creatures (
Although all of creation does praise God!, but they do so
involuntarily. Our voluntary praise implies love.). With Christ, that which is natural (the religious inclination), by grace, is perfected. It will reach its full perfection in heaven.
Some say that the Christian religion can be reduced to "trust in Him to be our Savior and Redeemer". I agree. It is the "working out your salvation with fear and trembling", the putting into practice that "trust" that is at issue. With St. James, I say, "You show me your faith, I will show you my works." In other words, my life must demonstrate that I do in fact
trust God. It is not my works that earn (as a wage) my salvation, but without works my "trust" is empty pleading. I am not a sum total of my mental acts, but a sum total of my "being-in-the world". This "being-in-the-world" means that my beliefs are represented by my existence: my actions, my thoughts, my deeds, and what I fail to do. In other words, a man cannot love his wife,
without actually loving her.
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Don't close your eyes. You
must love what you can see,
to love what you cannot. |
Furthermore, if I say I trust Christ but reject the Church he founded,
knowing that it is the Church he founded, I no more trust Christ than I trust Jim Jones. Because if I cannot love what I see (the Church), how can I love who I cannot see (Christ)? Instead, Christ through His Church erects a direct path, a Way, to Himself. No longer is salvation "there" or is Christ to be found "in the mountains", but instead we know where Christ is to be found.
He is to be found in His Church. Since the Church is His Body, the Church is not an extra layer of mediation but an extension of the ministry of Jesus (Ephesians 3:6). Without trepidation we can know this, because He promised He would personally ensure that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Body. In fact, since the Church is His Body, if the Church fails, He fails. Of course, He cannot. So, from this, if I trust the Church, by direct extension, I
trust Christ. Many try to compare the Church to Israel (and by doing try to point to the possibility of the Church defecting), but such a comparison fails to consider the import of the Church being Christ's Body. Israel was never the Body of Christ.
Thus, just the opposite is true from my opening comment. Any system (religion) that removes the Church erects a new veil between me and the Father, because it is our Lord's good will that we would know Him in His Holy Church.
