Religion Can Be Dangerous

Prayer of Preparation

Religion Can Be Dangerous

Sunday Scriptures:

Psalm 51:6-17

Luke 3:1-22

Religion can be dangerous; the Psalms warn us. The danger of “religion” lies in thinking or believing that a set of ideas about God is enough.

Ellen Davis writes:

“’Religion’ in the dangerous sense is a set of ideas about God, abstracted from an ongoing relationship with God—that is, religious notions that have been purified from all of the ups and downs, the challenges to our self-satisfaction and certainty, that are part of any intimate relationship. Such pure religion can easily become stultifying to ourselves and threatening to others. . . . Because Psalms are prayers, they force us to do more than engage in reasonable speculation about God. Using their words brings us into direct encounter: through them we find ourselves talking to God, sometimes in language we would never have imagined would come from our lips.”

The Psalms, notes Davis, are not all poems of praise and thanksgiving. Many make plain that all is not right with the world. Sometimes they reflect on our own human contributions to the wrong. Sometimes they demand that God do something about what isn’t right.

But always, they reject any religion that is not in relationship with God.

Relationship-less religion is not the faith of Scripture. It is not faith that follows Jesus. Religion that is concept only, external to our core is dangerous. Literally, it causes harm to us and to everyone in our perimeter. Only relationship with God rights us with God, ourselves, and the world.

The Psalms are right: religion without relationship is dangerous.

David may have forgotten this. He may have lapsed into relationship-less religion while looking over his palace wall onto the house below where he saw Bathsheba. Immediately he determined that he wanted her, would collect her for himself, regardless of whether or not she wished to be possessed by him, regardless of the fact that she was married to Uriah, an elite soldier in David’s army.

Everything except what David wanted went out the window. He takes Bathsheba. He has Uriah killed. All is calm in his relationship-less religious world until he has a conversation with Nathan, David’s trusted advisor. And through that conversation, David realizes he has been grievously wrong. He has shed blood.

David’s sin is toxic, deep and thick. He may have kept his religious language, markers, symbols and practices, but he was not in right relationship with Almighty God. His religion was dangerous. Dangerous to Bathsheba. Deadly to Uriah. Dangerous to his neighbors, his kingdom, and his faith community. He caused harm.

And so, he pours out his heart in the brokenness of his realization. He pours out his heart admitting that he has served only himself. He confesses his sin, asks for help, for God to make his heart clean again. He asks for God to restore him to right relationship. “Create in me a clean heart.”

Without relationship with God, religion can be dangerous.

God challenges, Davis writes, our self-satisfaction and our certainty. At times we can be pretty pleased with ourselves, as I imagine David was when Bathsheba was brought in through the palace doors, or when he heard that Uriah had indeed been struck down. God challenges anything and everything in and out of us that causes harm to us or to others, whether those “others” are near or far.

And our certainty. God surely challenges that. Our certainty that we are not lovable. Or that someone else is not lovable. Our certainty that we are holy enough to proclaim the sin of someone else. Our certainty that our control of religion, our defense and protection of God, our insistence on “our way or the highway,” will keep religion front and center in society. Our certainty that God’s sovereignty needs us.

David was certain enough to have a man killed in order to unlawfully take his wife. God challenges our certainty as God should.

Without relationship with God, religion can be dangerous.

John blasts relationship-less religion. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor” (Luke 3:7b-8a). Do not begin to say that you have religion when you don’t have relationship.

There is a lot of mistrust with, disgust of the institutional church, mistrust of pastors due to relationship-less religion.

• The religion that always tells others what they should be doing.
• The religion that judges.
• The religion that shames.
• The religion that prides itself on being right.
• The religion that tells others to hush.
• The religion that puts some above others.

That kind of religion can be dangerous. And destructive. And diminishing.

To that, John says, “Bear fruits worthy of repentance.” What are those fruits? They are generosity toward and care for others, distribution of assets, honesty, not bearing false witness, not taking from someone else just because you can.

Those things come by way of relationship with God. For it is God who gives us peace to trust we have enough. It is God who gives us eyes to see God in others. It is God who demands that what comes out of our mouth is not false. Without God, without relationship with God, religion can be dangerous.

David learned that.

John warns of it. Religion without relationship is the tree that does not bear good fruit. That tree, those trees, are “cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:9b).

“Bear fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8a).

Right relationship with God, love of self, love of others, care for the world.

Those things right religion and mold us into the way of Jesus who came not to harm but to heal and transform.

Create in us clean hearts, O God.

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Works Cited:

Ellen F. Davis. Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament. Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 2001.

Feasting on the Word Worship Companion. Liturgies for Year C, Volume 1. Advent Through Pentecost. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.

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