Faith versus Religiosity

  Faith versus Religiosity

This is one of the oldest of chestnuts of the institutes of religious observance.  I am aware of the anomalies of the last sentence, the same word has been used in differences between the title and the following sentence: it is a differentiation that I hope to clarify in the following paragraphs.

Faith for the purposes of this piece is the relationship that is created when we accept, or recognize, that there is a being, or power, that is beyond our control.  The title word Religion, or religiosity in the same context, is the personal use for a similar notion. This other power may be as simple a concept of mother nature of any of the any of the world religions which may be more that the major faiths.

Religious observance has two elements to it.  In the context of a godhead there is the observances of the main tenets of the faith, then in addition there is the constructs that we place about these observances.  As an example of the current elements is the upcoming “Forty Hour Famine”.  Originally it was a commitment to not eat for the period of Forty hours.  This was then then amended to a period of abstinence followed by a feast to celebrate having succeeded in the resolve.  The latest amendment was to forgo anything for Forty Hours.  This may be anything as simple as what I am doing now operating a computer keyboard.

While the Forty Hour Famine may be a simple example of what this writing is about it is also a basic example of what religious restriction/corruption does to our Faith Life.  The Forty Hour Famine in its conception was to allow we of the Affluent West to experience what life is like for those who live normally in a famine situation, whilst raising money to help them in alleviating their situation.

It becomes more serious when we corrupt what God desires of us by making it a series of restrictions on the freedoms that He gives us.  If you remember the story of the Garden of Eden, God the Creator of all, told man to not eat of the fruit of one tree, the consequence of which would be death.  They were free to eat from all the rest of the garden and as long as they stayed in that restriction they could enjoy the fellowship and relationship with their Creator.  The minute they broke ranks with what God intended fort them everything changed.  For starters they became aware of their nakedness and hid from God because of their disobedience, and then they lost all the privileges of their life prior to eating the forbidden fruit. Finally the pain o labour for man and woman entered their life.

The creation story has many parallels in modern life. Religious observance has imposed many more restrictions and the consequential guilt upon all sorts of areas of our lives.  This is the difference between Faith, the freedom of association with our God, and the self-imposed restrictions of “religious observance.  We salve our conscience by imagining that God has a litany of restrictions, or penalties, that will make up for our failures while still not restoring His intended relationship with us.

And the simple truth is that His Son Jesus has already restored us to the personal relationship that Father wants.  All that we need to do is to recognize that He has done it all and all that is required of us is to admit (confess) our failures, including taking our own path and to return to the Way of the Father including enjoying the peace and relationship He always intended for us.

This is the ultimate freedom because it is the way that God intended for us and Him.