ranting on religion

There's an interesting topic being discussed here about this book written by Spencer Burke on the controversial subject of Hell. This is apparently a hot topic within the Emerging Church crowd, especially since McLaren's book on the topic came out. I wanted to touch on this quote Scott McKnight used in his review of Spencer Burke's book:

1. We need to get beyond religion. The problem today is “religion” – institutionalization of the Christian faith, focus on propositional creeds, driven by Sunday morning services, and propped up by the economy of the church that keeps people coming back and the staff fully paid.
2. We need to get beyond religion to find a spirituality.
3. We need to discover that following the way of Jesus can get us beyond religion to find this spirituality.
4. What we will find beyond religion is grace.
5. People who will take us into that grace, where we find the “sacred beyond religion,” are heretics. Jesus was the “original heretic.”
6. Panentheism is reality: we are all “in God”. This is not the same as “pantheism” which contends in one way or another that all is god.

Please bare with me while I rant about this...

1. I'm tired of the "we need to get beyond religion" thing. I know that's the cool, emerging church kind of thing to say, but it's crap. We need to get beyond ourselves. We need to get beyond our hang ups. We need to realize that "religion" in itself is not a four letter word. God is big on religion, at least that's the impression I get from the Bible. He's not a fan of empty religion. He doesn't want lip service. This doesn't mean he's opposed to religion, just our crappy attempts at it. Seems to me that a fairly good part of the Pentateuch is concerned with God dictating the details of forming a religion for his people. He likes liturgy, smells & bells. He likes spiritual discipline. He appears to be a fan of order and structure.

I'm also slightly appalled--though not surprised--at his assumption that creeds are somehow a bad thing. They are essential tools of defining who we are as a people. The early church--people much closer to the Apostle's than we are--thought creeds were important. It's this contempt for our fathers that condemns us to reinventing the wheel over & over again.

2. Sorry but what we need to do is let spirituality infuse our religion and let our religion guide & form our spirituality.

3. Following Jesus is going to lead us toward godly, Spirit-empowered, living religion. Jesus didn't come to destroy religion but to show us how to have true religion (Matt 5:17).

4. Religion is NOT opposed to grace. It is where we encounter grace, receive grace and practice grace.

5. Sorry, but I just wanted to vomit after reading that one. Jesus was a heretic?! Are you kidding me? Sorry, but heretic has never been considered a positive comment/trait. I can't even talk about this one.

6. Sorry, but we're not all in God in the same way. This gets to the neo-universalist argument Burke & McLaren trumpet: "How could a loving God send someone to Hell?" Um, are we not reading the same Bible? Sin separates us from God. Sin cuts us off from God. Sin makes us dead. It's the human condition. God made a way through Jesus, but you've got to be in Christ to be saved, to participate in the life of God. The NORMAL way for that to happen is through baptism and faith. That is what those messy, inconvenient creeds remind us about. This doesn't mean that God can't act in an extraordinary, supernatural way to those who never heard the gospel, but it also doesn't mean that everyone is automatically made a part of the Kingdom by default.