The landscape of history is littered with the ashes, mutilated corpses and severed heads of infidels, and heretics. In most cases, the only “crime” that these unfortunate men and women committed was not bowing to a particular religious establishment of their day, which sought to control their lives. Yes, history testifies to the fact that there have been a lot of angry religious people, who were Hell bent on forcing others to serve their favorite religious establishment.
Why would someone, who claims to walk with God, herd 100’s of men, women and children into a synagogue and, set it on fire, while singing hymns to the “Lord”in order to drown out their screams?
Why would a group of men, who claimed to walk with the Creator of the universe, ride into a town, and behead all the men, take all the “older” women as slaves, and take girls as young as 5 for “wives”?
There certainly is no shortage of religious anger in history.
Things have not changed much. In our day, angry religious people blow up buildings, kidnap girls, kill innocent teens, and molest boys.
And history marches on.
What is it with religious people? Where does this anger come from?
Religion says, “do this, and God will accept you”. It also says, “do this, and God will bless you” Here is the problem, however. We all know instinctively that God’s standards are extremely high, and that we can never meet them, in order to earn His approval or blessings.
Knowing that God’s standards are extremely high, and that we can never meet them, in order to earn His approval and blessings, produces a dangerous undertow of anger in our hearts. This dangerous stream of anger is capable of sucking us down, and destroying us. It is also capable of sucking down and destroying anyone else, who happens to be swimming too close to us.
In A.A. there is a saying about religion that goes like this, “try to get good, and you will get drunk“. There is a lot of truth in this saying.
See, if a person in A.A. gets involved in a religion other than A.A., and tries to get good, so that God will accept him and bless him with sobriety, in all likelihood, he or she will drink again. Why? Well, because they will get trapped in an undertow of anger, and the quickest way out of that undertow will be a drink or a drug.
There are a lot of angry people in churches on Sunday. These people have poison hidden underneath their tongues, and their bite is painful. They take themselves way too seriously, and think way too highly of themselves, while looking down on everyone else. These people don’t know how to have fun, and condemn everyone else for enjoying their lives. These people are of no help to anyone. Why?
Well, these people are trapped in the undertow of anger. They are trying to be good enough so that God will accept them, and they are doing a lot of good things to get God to bless them. They don’t feel accepted, and have the blessing that they desire. So they get angry.
The landscapes of A.A., and all the other churches are littered with the victims of religious anger. This should not be! No one needs to go somewhere and have someone tell them that they don’t measure up. We already know that we don’t measure up. No, we need some good news that will set us free, and keep us out of the stream of anger.
The Gospel is the good news!
When we hear the gospel, and bow our knee to Yeshua (Jesus), His Spirit comes to live in our body with us. Yeshua unites Himself with us. This is good news, because He measured up to Yahweh’s (God’s) standard (His law), and earned His approval, and blessings. And since He became one with us, and our life is hidden in His, we now meet Yahweh’s standard. Consequently, Yahweh approves of us, just the way that we are, and blesses us in spite of our behavior.
Did you feel an undertow pull on you when you read the last sentence? If so, you are in a dangerous place. Keep reading.
When we really and truely understand this simple truth, we will serve Yahweh with joy in our hearts. We will be free to swim in the waters of religion without worrying about the dangerous undertow that surrounds us. More importantly, we will be able to rescue others from the deadly undertow, and live a joyful life.
Think you have to perform like a circus animal in order for Yahweh to approve of you? Think you have to do “this or that “before Yahweh will bless you? Think everyone except you is living “in sin”? Think you will only stay sober, if you get good enough? Want to burn men, women and children because they don’t measure up? Want to cut someone’s head off, because they aren’t good enough for God?
If so, you need to embrace the real Gospel, because, my friend, you are most certianly trapped in the undertow of religious anger.
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