Institutionalised religion keeps its practitioners imprisoned in the human condition
Religion vs. Freedom
Of course it is not just popular entertainment that is keeping us institutionalised: we are beset by institutions from all sides: government, educational, informational, religious, to name a few. Let us examine religious institutions, as they were in Christ’s time, his response to them and how their legacy is still seen in today’s society.
The religious leaders of the time were the Sadducees and the Pharisees. It was against the latter group that Christ was most outspoken, because they believed in oral tradition as well as the letter of the law to such an extent that they used these to keep control over the population. A key incident in Christ’s dealings with this group was where he confronted them in Matthew 23. He accused them, among others, of the following:
• Preachers who do not practice what they preach.
• Placing heavy burdens on the people, but not lifting a finger to help them carry those burdens. In their book The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse, Johnson and Van Vonderen discuss the hundreds of contemporary case studies of people who have been abused spiritually by church leaders who offer “placebos in the form of easy answers, ‘try hard’ sermons and the latest ‘get rich’ formulas” instead of dealing with “the ugly and messy relational process of meeting people’s real needs” which are “sacrificed for a better-looking but false peace.”
• Doing things to make them appear holy in the eyes of the populace, like tying phylacteries (little bundles of scripture in boxes) to their foreheads and wearing impressive garments showing their position in the religious order.
• Insisting on being called ‘Rabbi’ (Teacher) and Father. Jesus warns his disciples not to address anybody by these titles, because they have only one Teacher and Father (God) and are to refer to one another as brothers and sisters instead.
Yet even though Christ was so vehemently outspoken against this, what happened in the traditional Roman Catholic Church and subsequent churches from the 5th Century onwards was the following:
• Flowing robes of office worn by priests and the higher clergy,
• The title ‘Father/Reverend/Your Grace/Pastor’ etc. given to these officials.
Furthermore, he pronounces seven ‘woes’ on these people:
• Hypocrites (a Greek word from the time meaning ‘actors’) who will not enter the kingdom of heaven and prevent others from doing so.
• Hypocrites who will travel far and wide to win one convert and subsequently corrupt that convert. Singer Steve Taylor in “I want to be a Clone” criticises the unhealthy conformity in modern day churches, where people are evangelised, come into the church and then… “if you want to be one of his/Got to act like one of us”: become a religious clone who can say all the right things and go through all the motions to fit in, even if it means losing your original conviction (“Be a clone and kiss conviction goodnight/Cloneliness is next to Godliness, right?”).
• Blind guides who make up their own traditions and superstitions regarding religious life and forcing the populace to conform to these. Jesus also warned about the “yeast of the Pharisees” – as soon as we act out of religion instead of the prompting of God’s spirit, we mislead others into conformity with the institution, making them clones of the institution, rather than conforming with God’s will.
• Hypocrites who are punctilious about small matters of God’s law but totally oblivious to the things that really matter: justice, mercy and faithfulness. How often today do we see people straining out the gnats of “evil” rock music and “abominable” gay marriage but ignore the dead camel, the metaphor for the lack of these three important qualities (justice, mercy and faithfulness) of the Christian walk?
• Hypocrites for whom exterior appearances matter more than what is inside of the person. But fix the inside and the outside will clear up. Today we see people going to churches that are run as slick business and entertainment operations, housed in beautiful buildings, but inside they are full of division, greed and corruption, with the scum rising to the top – from the Summoner and the Pardoner in Chaucer’s time, whose characters were based on typical church officials of that time, to the problem that the church in America faces, according to Brothers and Sisters, we have a Problem by Nicky Cruz: “But inside, they are actors – hustlers playing the angles of their own imaginary religious game show – saying all the right things at the right times.” Who can forget televangelists like Jim and Tammy Bakker who defrauded thousands of people and became rich? Ray Stevens’ song “Would Jesus wear a Rolex” (on His television show) sums up the gross materialism of these charlatans.
• Whitewashed tombs that appear righteous but inside are full of dead bones. Today we see people who are outspoken against those “gnats” of contemporary society and have the appearance of righteousness, claiming to be Christian, but in their condemnation of others show themselves to have no love or compassion for the human condition. In Shawshank Redemption, Warden Norton has a verse up in his office about God’s judgment – in his opinion – of those in the prison under him. But the irony is that of a man who believes in the letter of the law, standing in judgment over those condemned by the world yet is blind to his own sin: greed. The judgment comes for him in the end, indicting him for his greed and corruption. Today we have in-your-face materialism and consumerism in churches, well-heeled pastors preaching words about prosperity as a sign of God’s blessing, words that tickle the ears of their well-heeled congregation, but they do nothing to help those who are in desperate need, as seen in Johnson and Van Vonderen’s case studies.
• Preservers of traditions and history who claim allegiance to the prophets of the past, yet persecuting those of the present – Jesus and John the Baptist being the case in point here. Throughout church history we see persecution by the established religious order of those who dare criticise it:
Catholics have persecuted Protestants: Protestants have pursued Catholics: Lutherans have hunted Anabaptists; Episcopalians have burned Puritans ; Puritans have hanged Quakers; Calvinists have tortured Unitarians, and all have united in persecuting the heroic Infidels who have refused to believe in any of the multifarious and conflicting creeds. (Bennett RM. The champions of the church: their crimes and persecutions. D.M. Bennett, 1878, p. 832)
No comments:
Post a Comment