What is Religion?

James 1:25-27 (New International Version) 25 But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does. 26 If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. 27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

What is religion?

Is this not the question that divides nations, families, friends and creates antithetical theologies that justify our limited interpretation of scripture? Religion has become the kicking goad and the proverbial pink elephant in the room to many people in this day and age. We will limit who we associate with because of their “bad theology” and “heretical” views. Mean while we over look the plank in our own eye picking up the stone as we ponder casting it. I think the solution to overcoming this religious eye infection we have is realizing we are a body. We are the body of Christ. Like it or not, Baptist’s, Methodist’s, Charismatic’s, Armininian’s, Calvinist’s and all those claiming a remotely orthodox view of God and the Bible are knit together as body.
1 Corinthians 12:11-13 (New International Version) 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines. 12 The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by[a] one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
As the scripture states we are part of one another and we should love one another as well. Theology aside, be joined to the body as Christ would have you.
Love and Peace,
Chaplain Jeremy L. Evans