Religious Attitude
I read my Bible almost everyday. I have for over thirteen years now. Before that I never really did. Some days I feel like it and some days I don't. Some days I get a lot from it and some days I don't. It's like that for all of us. Some times we go through spiritual dry spells. We read our Bible, pray, go to church, give some money, sing some songs, and even wear a WWJD bracelet. Often at the point where we don't see the immediate return we call all of those things religious. And we don't want to be religious like those Pharisees. So the easiest conclusion would be to quit doing those things or change the way we do them, which is fine because once they become religious they do little good.But here's what I think. Being religious has little to do with what you are actually doing. It has a lot to do with the attitude that you do things with. So when what you do becomes religious, the first stop may not be what you are doing, but your heart. Of course that's harder to see and harder to change. We can't really quantify that very well. We can't quantify being religious either.
For instance, say you pray at 5 specified times of the day and you face a certain direction towards a holy place when you do it. You get on your knees and say the same words every day. One day you realize that what you're doing has lost meaning to you. What would you do? Scrap that tradition? Stop praying altogether? Pray to another God? Pray with your fingers crossed? Or change your attitude? Obviously, it's different for every person and every situation. Sometimes we need to change what we are doing. Sometimes we don't. I think our first check should be the heart, and then what we do. I don't mean to over generalize, but sometimes we miss out because we think it's what we are doing that makes it religious.
What do you think? What do you do to get out of a religious rut?
posted by Tim Oas @ 10:17 PM
3 Comments:
By change of heart in this case do you mean change of perspective? or something more?
I think it has more to do with motives than anything else. What is my motive for praying & reading the Bible? Is my motive because I HAVE to do this in order to acquire God's approval? So therefore, I do it out of a religious duty. Or is it because I love Him and desire to speak to Him and hear from Him regardless of the mood I happen to be in at the time of our "scheduled" meeting?
whenever i hear the word "religious"... i kind of freeze up.
because all i think when i hear that word is rules. narrow-minded thinking.
unfortunately, our faith becomes religion when it becomes about what we do rather than the state of our hearts.
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