If Your Religion is Anything Less Than This...
...Don't Trust It.
“Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash.” — Harriet Rubin
From early on, we are taught that pleasing God is a matter of learning right from wrong, discerning good from evil, and choosing right, and choosing good. This is a necessary first step, a way of teaching children to recognize something of how love looks. But it is not love, and being good or being right is not the point of such instruction.
The point of such instruction is to recognize the Christ when he appears, and fall in love. Once you do, you have no need of religious laws anymore, any more than a butterfly needs a chrysalis once its wings have emerged.
Can you imagine how foolish it would look for caterpillars to preach sermons to butterflies on why they must return to the chrysalis, contort their beautiful butterfly bodies and squeeze back into that old dead husk? But that is what most religion does. It seeks to cage and control what God has already set free.
Pure religion, by contrast, never tries to cage you. Never.
Pure religion is a wild king in a loin cloth laughing as he dances down the street before the presence of God, tossing out butterfly maps to wild frontiers where you may fly to meet Him.
If your religion is anything less than that, don’t trust it.
This is very timely. Thank you 🦋
Very well said, Mike. Loved this excerpt in particular:
"But that is what most religion does. It seeks to cage and control what God has already set free. Pure religion, by contrast, never tries to cage you. Never."