Christian Living
Whenever I have been asked, (usually by non-believers), if I am ‘religious’ I have always felt uneasy. I always respond ‘yes’, of course. It’s the simplest answer. The questioner clearly wants a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer only. They clearly don’t want the theological reason why I dislike that question. What I wish they would ask is ‘do you consider yourself a true disciple of Christ?’ Fat chance of that! Because Christianity is not about ‘religion’. Christ did not establish a ‘religion’. He simply said ‘take up your cross and follow me’. The secular world does not make the distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘discipleship’, and dare I say many who confess themselves to be Christians don’t recognise the distinction either?!
Christianity has not always been considered a ‘religion’. The very category ‘religion’ it has been argued by some (for example Peter Harrison, the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University), is a relatively modern one. It has been argued that ‘religion’ began to define itself over and against two things in particular. The first was secularism. With the gradual expansion of secularism, particularly since the Enlightenment, has come a more strictly defined, or at least understood concept of ‘religion’. Moreover as people began to explore new worlds, people came across other belief systems. ‘Religion’, therefore, continued to define itself somewhat with reference to other ‘religions’. The result has been the ‘systemisation’ of the concept of ‘religion’. ‘Religion’ became its very own thing, its own hypostasised entity. ‘Religion’ came to mean a system of belief, containing certain practices and doctrines to be obeyed.
Many theologians have questioned the category ‘religion’ of Christianity. The great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, considered ‘religion’ to be a human construct. For Barth religion represented man’s attempt to find God, man’s attempt to attain to God. Barth’s dialectical theology allowed no room for ‘religion’. For Barth the only way man could know anything of God is through God’s self revelation. Only by God’s ‘coming down’ to man can man know of God. So strictly did Barth adhere to this dialectical principle that he rejected all ‘natural theology’, that is, he rejected any notion that man could know anything of God by recourse to the natural world, or man’s cognitive faculties. For Barth, Christianity was true precisely because it was not a ‘religion’ like all the other ‘religions’ of the world, but because Christianity presupposes God’s self revelation to man. Whilst Barth was right to draw the attention of the liberal-minded world to the importance of God’s self-revelation in Christ, I personally believe he went too far in completely rejecting natural theology. But that argument is for another time. Right now I just wish to make it clear that Barth rather rejected the category of ‘religion’.
Another one to reject ‘religion’ was the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If you have not read his ‘Discipleship’, ‘Life Together’ or ‘Letters and Papers from Prison’ (he was imprisoned at Tegel by the Nazis for being part of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler) then I highly recommend them. He wrote that religion was ‘a garment of Christianity’. For Bonhoeffer ‘religion’ has been historically conditioned. There was once a time where it represented a legitimate form of Christianity, but the world, Bonhoeffer argues, is not ‘religious’ anymore. And with the decline of religion has come the gradual process of pushing God to the boundaries of life. Instead God ought to be the centre of our lives. True Christianity, Bonhoeffer believed, meant radical discipleship. It meant recognising that we were bought at a price, and that it comes at a cost to follow Christ. Christianity is not the systematic (and for many even inside the church, automatic) activity of going to church, uttering prayers and receiving forgiveness every Sunday morning. Of course these things are important but the truth is that such ‘religious’ Christianity has become a process of simply ‘going through the motions’. It has become meaningless and vacuous for so many people.
Barth and Bonhoeffer both rejected religion as a ‘system’ since it has numbed us to the radical demands of faith. Instead Christianity is, and always has been, about following Christ. And to follow Christ means exactly what Christ said it would, to deny oneself and to take up the cross. No one said it would be easy. It’s a big challenge, but it’s an exciting one!
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