What is True Religon?

Church Leaders

Christians are now into the second week of the Lenten season.

Traditionally, it's been a time of personal introspection, but I'd like to take a moment to turn the tables and ask a very basic, but necessary question: What is True Religion?

According to Micah (6:8 ESV) the answer to what does God require of us is: "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God." 

So, for starters, true religion seems to be inclusive, very much connected to others. Each one of the attributes listed by Micah have an outward focus (justice, kindness and humility). And they are each presented in an active way - that is, religion by definition asks us to move outside of ourselves to find a deeper relationship with our true self and with God.

Even before Micah, the author of Deuteronomy (possibly Moses) had insight. "What does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all God's ways, to love God, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statues of the Lord." (Deut. 10:11-13 ESV).

We now have a call to fear (have reverance for) the Lord, follow God's ways and interestingly there's another virtue added - namely, to love and serve God deeply and completely. It's interesting that the call to obedience (keeping the commandments) is listed last. Almost as if adherence to discipline is embedded in a love that is intense and intimate. 

Centuries after Moses and Micah, James had insight, writing: "Pure and genuine religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: caring for orphans and widows in their distress and to refusing to let the world corrupt you." (James 1:27 NLT)

Here comes another call to serve, to care. But note the specific groups that James mentions: orphans and widows. It's common knowledge that in the First Century, these were the two most marginalized groups. In the culture within which James was writing, orphans and widows had no advocates. No social status. No economic security. A widow as completely at the mercy of finding someone who would marry her. If not, she was reduced to begging. Orphans only had the option of begging.

James was making the point that without active love, mercy and service, widows and orphans faced lives of misery. And true religion consisted of helping them.

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In Old Testament times those fasting typically did so with sackcloth and ashes, as a visible sign that they were right with God. It was, for the most part, a fasting predicated on one's standing with God and, ironically, showing others where you stood within the spiritual hierarcy of the day. However, Isaiah had some pretty forceful language to these people who asked: Why hasn't God answered our prayers! Don't you notice how good we are? To these folks, God answers: 

“Is this not the fast that I have chosen:
To loose the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the heavy burdens,
To let the oppressed go free,
And that you break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out;
When you see the naked, that you cover him,
And not hide yourself from your own flesh?
⁸ Then your light shall break forth like the morning,
Your healing shall spring forth speedily,
And your righteousness shall go before you;
The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’

God, through Isaiah, seems to be saying that God's kind of fast isn't for show. It's not doing without. It's active service, aimed at supporting the oppressed, the broken, the hungry, the poor and the stranger (foreigner).

In fact, God seems to love this kind of fasting so much that God encourages it with several promises:

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“If you take away the yoke from your midst,
The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
¹⁰ If you extend your soul to the hungry
And satisfy the afflicted soul,
Then your light shall dawn in the darkness,
And your darkness shall be as the noonday.
¹¹ The Lord will guide you continually,
And satisfy your soul in drought,
And strengthen your bones;
You shall be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail. (Isaiah 58 NKJ)

So how about those of us living in the 21st Century? What's the application?

It might be that the Lenten call to fasting isn't one of giving up stuff (although if it's appropriate, there's no harm there). 

It might be that the Lenten call is a call to go beyond  giving up to letting go. 

Letting go of pride (to follow God humbly), letting go of self (to serve) and most of all, simply to open our eyes and see the God in those suffering around us.