RELIGIONISM

Religionism might not be a word that you are readily familiar with, but many of us know its actions.

Religionism is all about being religious just for the sake of saying we are religious.

Religionism serves no real purpose. It just gives someone a chance to pretend.

It’s make believe, just like that child’s game some of us used to play.

It’s when our “Religion” serves no purpose other than us being religious.

Religionism is Pietism.

Pietism is when Pious folks, those who like to make a show of their religiousness, use their religious knowledge to appear learned or spiritual.

They want to appear to be Godly or at the very least close to God.

In other words, their conduct and appearance are all for show. They have very little true substance.

It’s not about who they are, but rather who they want to appear to be.

Religionism is a game, just like “make believe”, that many are playing today and have played for quite some while.

Sadly, I too must admit to having played this game. I was pretending to know God, without truly knowing him.

I looked like I did, but really, I didn’t. Not truly.

Some say, fake it till you make it.

But as long as you fake it, you can never make it.

“It” being the quest to really get to know God. God wants us to really know him.

His tendencies, his ways, his moods, his likes, and dislikes. All of him.

What he likes to watch, likes to smell, likes to do. The complete person.

Mankind has always been on a quest to get to know God. But faking it is not the way to get there.

I, like many of you, went from faking to seeking.

Hence, that’s how we became Seekers.

The root word in Religionism is Religion.

Some think that Religion refers to the quest to find God, but it doesn’t.

Out of the 1,050 commandments given in the New Testament of the Bible, God’s Holy Book, not once does it instruct a reader to be religious.

From Genesis to Deuteronomy there are a recorded 613 commandments, but none mention religion or being religious.

In all the sacred writings of the 10 commandments given in the Old Testament, none says anything about God desiring his people to be religious.

There are only 3 occasions in which you will find the word “Religion” mentioned in the New Testament of the Bible.

The first usage of the word religion was when Paul talked about how he once was religious when he just went to church regularly and did church folk kind of things.

This is what he told the King who was questioning him. “After the most straightest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee” (Acts 26:5).

He went on to tell him, that he was no longer about that life of just rituals and beliefs. Paul became a Seeker. He sought after God.

The second use of the word religion was also done by Paul, in writing to the Galatians. He made this statement to them:

“For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church” (Gal. 1:13).

Paul shared with them that being religious made him hate and kill folks. Wow!

So far being religious does not sound too good.

Religious people are quick to talk about other people, but they rarely help them.

Paul learned that religion was about iron inflexible rules, laws, status, & traditions inherited from his Hebrew lineage, that focused on rituals not relationships.

Now let’s look at the third instance in the New Testament of the use of the word religion. 

This is in the Epistle of James, written to the nation and people of Israel, in which he said:

“If any man among you seem to be religious, and doesn’t watch his tongue, he has deceived his own heart, this man’s religion is vain” (James 1:26).

James warns us that if your religion leads you to talking about others you have already missed the mark.

Further, if your religion is ceremonial and ritualistic it is just for your own vanity.

James didn’t stop there. He went on to describe a different kind of religion, “Pure Religion”, that’s not about rituals, speeches, or boasting on what we’ve done.

 “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27).

In short, Pure Religion is when you help someone.

So, If you are going to practice religion, please let it be Pure Religion.

Help someone!

This is a Thompson Truth