God Hates Religion Does that sound weird to you? I hope this page won't sound too much at first like splitting hairs over semantics, but there is a VAST difference between Christianity and religion. Religion is a nothing more than a code of conduct. Morality could also be defined as a code of conduct, but while morality can be a healthy symptom of our Salvation, religion is what happens when a person takes morality to the extreme and tries to use it to earn the way to God. That is the central theme of MERE religion. By contrast, Christianity is about our relationship with God.

Focusing on Morality is like a doctor who only treats symptoms, and not disease

Religion - and any over-emphasis on mere morality - distracts us and misuses our energy. Satan himself LOVES religion for this reason...because it takes our eyes off of that which we really need.

All we really need is a Relationship with God - and we attain that through our acceptance of Christ's sacrifice for us.

Satan doesn't desire our worship of himself...as long as he can keep us from our relationship with God. That is his mission because he wants more than anything to hurt God, Whom he hates . The best way to hurt God is to attack what He loves most (us) and keep us from Him. That can easily be accomplished by focusing us on the counterfeits of religion.

Morality can be healthy as long as we don't think it's the end-all-be-all of our approach to God, as many people certainly do. You hear it all the time, even in Churches...

People often say that they think they will go to Heaven because they have been a good person. No! That's just not it. The Bible NEVER says this. What It does say is that we can never be "good." ("For all have sinned and fallen short," It says) It say to simply "establish a relationship with Me, by accepting Me...accepting My sacrifice on the Cross for you." THAT - and only that - is how we find acceptance from God, and what the Bible calls "The Narrow Way" to Salvation

The crux of the matter is that we can never earn God's favor, because we don't have the ability to attain perfection. Nothing short of perfection is pleasing to God. That's why we need to accept Christ's sacrifice for our sins on the Cross, because by acknowledging that complete payment for our sins by Christ, we are made perfect in God's eyes. That's what Salvation is. Our acknowledgement of Christ's sacrifice is the only thing needed to wash away our sins...and it is the only thing that will.

By contrast, religion is always a vain attempt to be "good enough" for God. It's taking the long way to God on a path that doesn't even lead to where we want to go anyway. Why do people do this? Probably the best explanation is that many people assume that Salvation "just can't be that simple." But it actually is. The Bible even tells us flat out that simple, childlike Faith is what is required - not endless quibbling over the academic, theological details of God's nature. In extreme cases,

People have gone to great lengths all through history in an attempt to earn their way to God...even to the point of severe self-inflicted suffering. It's a useless, sad and vain effort, and God's Heart is broken when He sees us put ourselves through it.

He has said to us in His Word that the only thing necessary in order to gain His favor (Salvation) is to accept His sacrifice on the Cross. Christ's death was the only payment required. All we have to do is acknowledge it.

Christianity is a relationship - rather than a religion. Christianity and Salvation are about establishing a relationship with God. It's actually not at all hard to do...after all, it is the reason we were created in the first place. We are all born with a God-shaped hole in us that only He can fill. That's why absolutely every society in history has a concept of God. He is a fundamental need, without Whom we are not complete.

God hates religion because it is one of the main impediments to the relationship he'd like to have with us. Religion could be described as mankind's fanciful inventions for trying to reach UP to God. I say fanciful, not to be condescending - but because it is sad the things to which mankind has often attached divinity...such things as mortal men and women (who were not witnessed walking around by 500 people three days after a confirmed death), the sun, dreams, cows, monkeys, rats, and trees. And now dirt and air, even, as evidenced in the new druism practiced by worshipers of Mother Earth, who say we belong to her - rather than the other way around. Anything to which you subordinate yourself is a god. Only the One True God is worthy of that, and all He wants is your acknowledgement of Him. He doesn't want your groveling. In fact, He treats us like royal children. He wants to lift us up to His amazing level, rather than beat us down the way religion does.

Christianity is the true story of how God reaches out to us. That story is what it is - regardless of our opinions about God, and the myriad rituals and religions we create from those opinions. When man invents his own paths to God, these paths are inevitably flawed (because we are flawed). Religion is a naturally flawed, human perspective - and many Christians have even put that kind of guilt-ridden ritualism into their Christian faith. We assume that something as worthwhile as a relationship with God should be very difficult to attain. But it isn't. A gift never is difficult to receive.

Salvation is a free gift  - not a rite of passage.

That Salvation is a gift is good news for all of us. God doesn't seek self-flagellating endurance from us, nor even churchy displays of piety and morality, in order to grant us Salvation. All He asks is that we acknowledge Him as Lord and Savior. That's really it. It's us who complicate the issue.

Why do we overcomplicate Salvation? I think there are three main reasons:

1. We assume that we must DO SOMETHING to earn it. That's where ideas like "Saved by Good Works" comes in. But we are not saved from Hell by good works or by ANYTHING that we can do. If there were something we could do, then we would not have needed Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross.

2. Although the act of acknowledging God as Lord and Savior sounds easy to say, it is difficult for us because it means that we have to acknowledge that there is Someone above and beyond ourselves. In our modern, humanistic culture this is counter to the humanistic mindset into which we have been assimilated. Just look at the desperate lengths we go to to take God out of the picture...evolution is perhaps the best example of how far we are willing to reach in these outrageous attempts. And even after we have Faith, it is often difficult to subordinate our own desires to God's purposes. In short, our ego gets in the way.

3. The enemy - yes, I am talking about Satan - offers a counterfeit for everything God gives us...in the hope that we will be distracted and misdirected off the path to God by things that seem to be the path. For Love, satan offers lust. In the place of the touted '(Protestant) work ethic,' that the Bible says leads to God-blessed wealth, satan offers up cheap, money-grubbing greed. Likewise, in the place of a relationship with God, satan offers us the tawdry substitute of religion. He only cares about hurting God by keeping us from Him - so satan doesn't care whether or not we believe in him or engage in devil worship, per se...only that we don't find our way to God, Whom he hates. To this end, his best trick yet has been to convince the modern world that he doesn't exist, and that it's unsophisticated to think that he does. Yet Christ personally warned us against him repeatedly - and not metaphorically.

Salvation means our being saved from Hell by being admitted into Heaven. God gets a lot of criticism for the existence of Hell, but He has made an easy path to avoid it - even to the point of offering Himself on the Cross in our stead so that we could completely avoid paying the price for our own sins. If we don't take that path, then the fault lies with us.

All God really wants from us is our acknowledgement of His sacrifice on the Cross - which means also acknowledging that He is God. He wants a relationship with us so that He can admit us in to His home. You don't allow strangers into your house, and neither does God. Furthermore, Heaven would not be a perfect place if imperfection were allowed to enter. That was the purpose of the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross - to pay for our sins so that we could be made "perfect enough" to enter Heaven. To be cleansed by that sacrifice, you need only acknowledge it. After we have done so, any achievements in the areas of morality and obedience to God grow from our love for what He has done for us. They are a symptom of having been cleansed, but they are not what cleanses us. That is how religion is the act of putting cart before the horse.

You don't become your earthly father's son by visiting him (going to Church)  or even by performing functions that help him (mission trips, etc). But you do those things because of your preexisting love for and relationship with him.

The main reason for this page is to point out that - even when we are not willingly AVOIDING the path to Heaven - the path is just as often obscured by the garbage we put in our own way in the form of religion.

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