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Tag: Relationship Not a Religion

Bruce, I Pray You Will Experience a Relationship with Jesus

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An Evangelical woman named Candida left the following comment on the post titled Wasted Years, Oh How Foolish . . . (all spelling and grammar in the original):

It’s a pity you went through this Bruce. Quite sad. Abd you’re quite right about lots of people in church whose lives are as ‘wasted’ as that of those outside church. That’s a reality.

I must say though there are also countless people whose lives have been changed, transformed, made meaningful by their encounter with Jesus.

There’s a big difference between encountering Jesus and being in church. You can be in church singing about, hearing about, maybe also preaching about Jesus without really encountering or knowing Him. If you know Jesus, you have a relationship with him, like the one you have with a wife whom you love and cherish. It’s real.

Many confuse activities in church with relationship with Jesus. There’s no love like His. I pray you, and all others who have abandoned the faith experience this relationship and this love first hand.

The Lord bless you. And everyone. And us all too.

Candida read all of one post and concluded that I never had a relationship with Jesus. Boy, I’ve never heard that before! 🙂 How could Candida possibly know the depth and quality of my relationship with Jesus? She doesn’t know me. She was not a member of one of the churches I pastored. How could she possibly know that I had “churchianity,” and not Christianity? I could spend days telling Candida how deeply I loved Jesus; how I devoted my life to serving and following him; that I taught my children to do the same. Would it make a difference in how she views me? Of course not. All she sees is Bruce, the Evangelical pastor turned atheist. Since I am an atheist today, that means I never was a Real Christian®. The fifty years I spent in the Evangelical church and the twenty-five years I spent pastoring churches are dismissed with a wave of the hand. What Candida is saying, then, is that I am a liar; that what I say about myself and give testimony to is a lie. Why do Evangelicals find it so hard to take former Christians at face value? When Candida says, “I am a Christian,” I believe her. It’s her story to tell. I wish Evangelicals would grant me the same respect.

I have experienced the love of Jesus firsthand, as have thousands of readers of this blog. Much like marriages where couples fall out of love and divorce, we fell out of love with Jesus, finding that he was not the person we thought he was. And so we divorced him, seeking love in people and places we had long denied (because Jesus told us to do so): spouses, families, and self. We reconnected with humanity and nature, and in doing so we found love. Why would any of us want to return to a jealous, demanding lover?

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Is Christianity a Religion or a Relationship?

christianity a relationship

I’m sure you’ve heard it before: Man gives us religion, but Jesus gives us life; True Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship; Religion kills, Jesus gives life. According to this line of thinking, religion is bad and Jesus is good. I have often been told that my reactions and objections to Christianity are really about religion, not Christianity. In fact, I’ve been told, more than a few times by Evangelical zealots, that I never had a real relationship with Jesus at all. I had religion, but not Jesus.

There is this assumption that if somehow, some way, we can get back to a pristine version of Christianity; first-century Christianity; a Christianity that is pure and free from the trappings of 2,000 years of history, we will end up with the Christianity of Jesus.  This, of course, is bullshit. Western Christianity is actually the Apostle Paul’s baby, and I doubt most of those trying to find authentic-Jesus-Christianity would really want it if they found it. In Matthew 5-7, Jesus makes it clear what it means to be his follower. Modern-day Christians ought to contemplate these verses a bit before they say, I am a follower of Jesus.

Is there any such thing as pure Christianity? Even if we go back to the first century, we find division and controversy among those who called themselves Christians. They weren’t unified, and shortly after the death of Christ, we find a huge controversy between Peter and Paul over whether a person had to be circumcised to be saved. The early church was made up mostly of Jews, and many of them thought it proper to expect Gentile converts to adhere to the teachings of Judaism. As history shows, the followers of Jesus were considered a subset of Judaism for many years. And then we have James’ and John’s take on what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Their gospels bear little resemblance to that of Paul.

From day one, Christianity was a controversy-filled religion. Christianity was not something that was new. It was a culmination, completion, or extension of something that was old. According to theologians, Jesus was the fulfillment of all the Old Testament types and shadows. The New Testament church (the elect) became the covenant people of God. Without understanding Judaism it is impossible to understand Christianity. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say Judaism was not a religion, it was a relationship. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say religion kills, but Judaism gives life. Yet, one would be right to suggest that without Judaism (or the Bible) there would be no Christianity.

Judaism is a religion and so is Christianity. I realize that some people want to distance themselves from the modern Christian church. The church is a monolithic behemoth full of corruption and perversion, and there is little within the church that is worthy of emulation. But just because you don’t like organized Christianity doesn’t mean it’s not what it says it is.

Who is it that gave us the Bible? Men. Who is it, then, that told us about Jesus? Men. Who is it that tells us everything we know about the teachings of the Bible? Men. It is clear that men gave us Christianity. Using the logic set forth in the first paragraph, Christianity is indeed a religion. How could it be otherwise? If true Christianity is this mystical I-feel-it-and-I-know belief, how could people know for sure that they have the real thing? Well, the Bible says___________. Yes, and that brings us right back to the men at the center of Christianity.

For those who believe in the distinction between religion and Christianity, I would ask them to describe the differences between the two. I would ask them to tell me what this pure Christianity looks like and where I can experience it. I would ask them to explain to me how they can square the teachings of the Bible with their belief that one can have Christianity without the church.

This kind of thinking primarily exists in the United States. We are a nation of individualists, and that’s why we are attracted to individualistic (narcissistic) forms of religion. If the Bible teaches us anything, it teaches that Christianity is a communal religion with every believer being a part of the whole. The Bible speaks of the church as a body, and that every part is vitally important to the rest of the body.

Let me be clear, it is impossible for people to claim Christianity and reject the church. Without the church and the Bible, there is no such thing as Christianity. Since the church wrote the Bible, it is the church that gave us Christianity. To be a Christian requires a communal connection with a visible body of believers. It has always been this way, and it is up to the Christianity-is-not-a-religion crowd to show why it shouldn’t continue to be this way.

Feelings and personal opinions don’t matter here. What does the Bible say? Is the Bible the bedrock of Evangelical Christianity? I maintain that there is no Christianity without the Bible. It is up to those who disagree to prove otherwise. Show me how it is possible to have Christianity without the church or Christianity without the Bible. From my seat in the atheist pew, the church and the Bible are joined at the hip and each needs the other to survive.

I’m sure someone is going to ask why this matters to me. After all, I’m not a Christian, so why do I care? This issue matters to me because I write a good bit about Evangelical Christianity. Whenever my writing gets too uncomfortable for Evangelicals, they like to suggest that I am not writing about their brand or their version of Christianity. They like to suggest that I have confused religion with Christianity. When family members do bad things, they like to divorce themselves from their relatives and pretend there is no familial connection. But, like it or not, every Christian is connected to other Christians, and the crazy uncles and aunts are part of the family.

I will tell my Christian readers this: it is your Church, live with it. When you attempt to have a Christianity without the Church, you are in effect starting your own religion, the Church of the Churchless Christ-Followers. You are simply doing what Christians have been doing for 2,000 years, spawning tens of thousands of sects.  If you don’t like what you see, start something new, right? But no matter how much you try, and no matter how often you reinvent yourself, Christianity will always be a religion.

Wikipedia states it succinctly:

Religion is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or in general a set of beliefs explaining the existence of and giving meaning to the universe, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

Christianity was, is, and always will be a religion.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Bruce Gerencser