Religion or Relationship, or Both?
Luke 2:45
"And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."
In our culture, in our American culture, our postmodern culture, what truly is our heritage? What moves us to worship? What drives our morality? What do we truly believe on a whole?
Human beings by nature are always seeking after ease and comfort. That's what most people believe they want. We tend to develop our own routines, which eventually become our traditions without us even realizing it. And in our communities, we tend to agree upon these values and practices. It's our human nature to act in this way. We communally believe things about the universe and in matters of spirituality we tend to share our worldview as well. Or at least we do for a time until something occurs to redefine our point of view. Usually that thing that changes our worldview is some kind of trial, sometimes moments of trouble. And in the Old Testament we see this play out all too often.
The people of God flip in and out of love for God throughout the generations. They build up systems of holiness to glorify God and themselves until something occurs, some destruction comes upon them, and then they turn to every sort of pagan god that their enemies worship. And after a while it becomes hard to understand which came first, the trouble or the falling away. Cause and effect becomes difficult to know. Were they truly just, serving and loving God? Or were they inviting trouble by all their many idolatrous acts?
If you think about it, it seems that over time humanity has made a tradition out of this rebellion. Nowadays, here in American society, one of those traditions is to throw away or replace everything that appears to be tied to the religious ritualism and the not so perfect past. Our father's religion is the enemy now. Nowadays the religious mantra is "it's not about religion it's about relationship". And I call this mantra religious, because that's immediately what it became. And everything spiritual that people do goes this way. Like I said earlier, humans by nature live by their traditions. They're always seeking how they might know God's will for their life, and how they can reproduce that knowing over and over again. So, they build up rituals to familiarize themselves to some experience of the Holy. In prayer and worship, song and dance. Worship is a traditional thing by its very nature because its repeated often, and it's good to know why.
So, you might ask yourself why it seems that I'm saying these things about traditional worship when typically, you can find me railing on about men who are following after the traditions of men.
Why? Because I recognize that traditions are a part of our nature. And I know we all do it. I do it. Every day I religiously do my study, and prayers, always in the same way for the most part. These things are my experience of The Holy that are particular to me. And by our human nature, when something works, we tend to repeat it. This is my response to the preceptive will of God.
The preceptive will of God has to do with the revealed commandments of God and his Word, aka as the Holy Scritpures. And it has to do with our response to that word or command. His law remains intact whether we obey it or not. Therefore, we can choose to ignore it and disobey it, but we cannot annul it. We have the power to disobey the precepts, but we don't have the power to refuse the responsibility for that choice, aka the consequences.
I ritualistically think and believe things about God, and I respond in prayer and worship to Him according to that preceptive will that has He revealed to us in His Word. I'm not adding anything to his will that he has purposely hid from humanity. I don't, however, reject seeking the Holy Spirit's illumination outside the Word of God. I have experienced this revelation myself. I'm also not talking about the occult-like spiritualism that some participate in, but I am talking about how God is moving us forward into his Son Jesus through inspiration and grace. He draws us, moves us, enlightens us and soberly shows us his will through immediate happenings around us. Not always, not religiously, but sometimes He comes clear and present, and sometimes he doesn't. And it is for this reason that we shouldn't create traditions that are designed to create this illumination artificially. God's preceptive will (His Word) is given to us for balance against that artificial charisma, it's given for the purpose of sharing information and sharing our experience. All I'm saying is, if we're going to create traditions that we can pass on as a people, and we are, we should create them in accordance with this preceptive word of God. They should be balanced and in accord with his preceptive Word.
Why?
So that we may do all that God has revealed about his will. So that we might become doers of God's will and not of our own.
Think about this when you say "it's not about religion it's about relationships". Jesus followed religious teachings and traditions. Jesus kept all the law of God. Jesus was Jewish and he kept the traditions of the Jews that were written in the preceptive will of God. And he challenged those traditions that weren't revealed in the scriptures, the additional traditions that were from other sources.
It is the will of God that we would believe and keep every word that precedes from His mouth. Religion is his will and our relationship in Him. It's not that we should reject religion, it's only that we shouldn't trust humanism, human traditions born out of human desire, and traditions contrary to Scripture and not revealed in God's Word.
In our focus scripture today, Mary the mother of Jesus is blessed because God revealed His will to her, and she believed Him. She remained in His will and obeyed Him, religiously. And you might get to thinking that this was a special blessing from God but not perceptively His. This was an act of The Holy Spirit apart from the Word of God. In another word, a special blessing and work of revealing God's will specifically for her. And therefore maybe it should be suspect. Why wouldn't we suspect it, it sounds crazy, a virgin birth? But the thing is, this is preceptive. There's a precedent in God's word. The preceptive Word of God does indeed have this will of God already revealed and laid out in detail in the prophets hundreds of years before Mary is born. And that's why we tell those stories. That's why we create those traditions and religious beliefs, to help us to remember and keep God's will clear in our traditions.
The people of Mary's time didn't keep God's will well. Their religion was out of line, filled with humanism and the traditions of people who weren't respecting God's preceptive will. Jesus is seen as a young boy arguing these things with the religious leaders. Jesus said of himself that it was for this purpose that he came, to testify to the truth. He came not to settle scores, but to settle the truth.
These days you hear about "settled science", but do we believe in a "settled truth"? Does our American culture, which largely claims to be Christian, believe in settled truth? Are we really keeping God's preceptive will? Or have we developed complex systems of Christian-like structures of worship and rituals that have no grounding in the truth?
As I see it, it is our task as a society to find better ways of maturing the young men and women in our culture through a spiritual reawakening that will help them to stem the tide of all this secularism, and the many idols, the humanism, the fatherless homes and the leaderless churches. That spiritual reawakening isn't some new idea that hasn't been tried before. It's merely Christianity. It's refocusing our relationship and our religions upon the preceptive will of God.
This is what it means when we see...
Romans 12:2
"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."
This should be our tradition, seeking to be transformed by the renewal of our mind. Testing everything we believe, and think about, according to God's word which is his preceptive revealing of his will. And then that relationship we have with God's preceptive will is our religion. Hopefully it's free from all influence that is outside of God's will. If we are tested with anything, it is by the transformed mind in such a way so that it doesn't seek after things that are outside of God's will. This is what we mean when we say we are going to leave it in God's hands. We should build a tradition of minds being transformed, but instead we've transformed the worship and the relationship which is our religion. We've instead transformed the church to conform to the world.
Look again at our example in Mary, the mother of Jesus. In Luke, it talks about how she pondered all these things in her heart. What was she pondering? From what resource was she drawing upon information in which she could ponder these things? Well, today's focus scripture gives us an insight into that.
Luke 2:45
"And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."
She believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. As did the prophets before her. As did all who wrote the word of God. The written word of God that reveals God's will for his people, reveals what should be believed by his people. The things that would be fulfilled according to this word. Mary knew both his preceptive will from Scripture and his illuminated will that came to her from the angel of God. She was able to ponder these things and take them into consideration as a whole. She wasn't going to just take the angel at his word, but she did balance it with the preceptive word of God.
And so, it's like this, with everyone who is spiritual, Christian, claiming to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. Whatever illumination you receive whatever lessons you hear whatever truth you are pondering, all of it should balance with the preceptive word of God's will.