Jesus vs. Religion

In my humble opinion, I disagree.

In the opening line, he immediately claims that Jesus came to abolish religion. He provides some explanation to sustain that point (to which I will refer later on), but as far as I can tell, he can't verify it. Firstly, if Jesus came to utterly destroy religion, why does He show, from the day of his birth to his death, an utmost reverence for the Law of Moses and ancient customs of Judaism? Why didn't he put an end to the establishment of the Sanhedrin - if he and his disciples didn't throw flaming torches at the synagogue, they could've at least taught their followers how to bulldoze the concept of religion. But no, 2000 years on we're still stuck with it.

By the way, the last time I checked, Jesus came to save the world from sin and lead whosoever believeth to Him eternal salvation. (John 3:16)

Yes, religion was created by man in an attempt to search for God. But that's the point, isn't it? Man is not perfect. Man makes mistakes, and very grievous mistakes they are too. It is our own human imperfections, what we believe is the quest of godly righteousness that leads mankind into wars and colonialism and torture and abuse. Religion, being conceived by the human mind, can never be perfect. Yes, various religious institutions try to mask their problems, many religious people are hypocritical and there are a lot of things people could do better. But please, for a moment, take your mind of the flaws that could be mended if man wasn't so proud and foolish.

If it is true that religion is man searching for God, then religion is necessary for he who claims to love God. You can't just have what you call Christianity - God searching for man and running after us when...what are we doing again? Busy watching porn? If it's true that we love Jesus, can we hope to sustain a relationship of mutual trust and affection when we can't be bothered to search for God? Can we even call that love?

The point of religion is behaviour modification. The point of religion is for people to be able to change their lives in an attempt to get to God as much as we can. Religion doesn't make us perfect, its rules are there to discipline us in order for us to stay focused on our quest for God instead of thinking about getting laid every weekend. Sure Jesus condemned the Pharisees for "just following some rules" because they did not appreciate the value these rules held in bringing them to God. They, like us at points in our lives, only went to church or a Planetshakers concert because all our friends were there and it was cool. But Jesus himself was circumcised according to the Law, celebrated the Passover and in many instances quoted the religious Scripture. He followed rules of fasting where I'm sure He wanted to eat - because if Jesus didn't enjoy eating, I'm sure He wouldn't have given the 5,000 men so much fish and bread to stuff their stomachs that they even had leftovers. The son of God himself submitted to earthly regulations, are we so grand to think that we have no need for the law?

Religion does not make us slaves, at least not where Christianity is concerned as far as I know. Christianity makes us servants to one another despite being sons and daughters of God. It teaches us to be humble, to put others made in the likeness of God before us as we would put our Lord before us. It only makes us slaves if we choose to see our servitude as a form of slavery and we cannot comprehend the commandment to love one another as Christ loves us.

Yes, we are saved because of Jesus' obedience and not our merits. But does that mean we can get high and waste our lives just because salvation depends not on what we do? Faith without actions is dead. And according to the much-loved man named Jesus, to truly be saved and inherit eternal life, one must keep the commandments. (Matthew 19:16-19, Mark 10:17-21 and Luke 18:18-23, to cite a few of passages.)

Again in my humble opinion, religion acts to complement to human-God relationship, even if it isn't always sucessful. Without religion, there would be no religious teachings, no holy books, no unity of a single cause that could (and I only mean could) result in peace by a majority of global population because they hold fast to the same beliefs. It's odd how he says he "loves the church" and "loves the Bible" but overlooks that without the Catholic faith there would be neither.

In any case, Christianity is technically a religion. The Church is a religious institution. The Bible is a religious book. Religion, defined word by word, is the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. Assuming you believe in Jesus as both a divine and human being and your personal Lord and Saviour, I can safely say that you have a religion.

So.