I've never understood why "religious" folk, those who take the name of Christ and become 'Christian', fall into the trap of thinking they know more than God about how He should do things. God says "Forgive," and they say, "But only if they ask with the 'proper' humility." God says "Love your neighbor as yourself," and they say, "But only if they hold to the correct doctrines." God says, "The dead know not anything," but they say, "Oh, no, they must suffer by burning in hell forever." Jesus says, "Don't call your brother a fool," but they say, "What if he is a fool?"
God does not need PR people to maximize attendance in his church. He doesn't need preachers to frighten sinners into being good by telling stories about souls living in torment in Hell that the political church borrowed from the Greeks to use in keeping its members frightened into submission. Why are some who cherish "my religion" so afraid God is going to fall down on the job that they are willing to lie, intimidate and terrorize their fellow man into submission.
God needs children who will love Him with all their hearts and their neighbors as themselves. He does not ask us to become spiritual stormtroopers. It is a dangerous thing to add extra burdens onto the backs of our fellow men and women that He has not placed on them. When we do so, we make our personal world narrower and narrower and ever more focused on those things we have added to our 'religion' in our misguided efforts to help God out a little where He's gotten slack over the millenia. We come to think of it as "my religion" and when your religion belongs to you, you reduce God to a size you can handle instead of experiencing Him in the utter vastness and splendor that makes you realize that you are really quite a small fellow in a wide world after all. That terrifies some people and they shrink from it, seeking to reduce God to a size they can handle. Once they've done that, then they begin to find fault with the way God does things. Not big flaws, just minor procedural problems of the sort someone like you could manage quite nicely, so as not to have to bother God about such trivialities anymore. He does have so much to do after all. Why should He be bothered to discipline a few troublesome saints when you are perfectly capable of handling that without having to bother Him at all?
That need to protect God from His own kindness is why so many of us become imprisoned in our own little insular circles. We do not forgive. We do not leave outcomes in God's hands. If we really look hard at it, we'd find that we don't trust God to be tough enough on others who aren't as "spiritually mature" as we are. And because our reach is not as vast as God's we soon find we can control only that which is within our own very short reach. As a result, over time we imprison ourselves within a tiny space limited by the range within which we feel we can exercise full control over everything in our lives. Tragically, once we have caged ourselves within that narrow world, we find that there is no room left in there for God. We have shut Him out and are left alone with our self-torment unsuccessfully trying to manage even our own tiny world - a job for which only God is truly suited.
More people should visit the beautiful outdoor places of the world such as the ones in the pictures that accompany this story. If you spend enough time in such places - the ones built by God - you find that the need to control everything melts away like mud in a hot soapy shower. When confronted by the majesty of God's creation, it becomes far more and more difficult to hem yourself into the small world of the sort that so many of us "religious" people create for ourselves. When we experience the breath-taking places God has made, we are lifted above our petty selves and as Isaiah said, "will....ride upon the high places of the Earth." If that's not enough to set your soul free, then you must be enjoying your chains more than I ever did.
© 2013 by Tom King
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