Some of my friends and I were discussing religion and why people think it's a bad thing. So many people ask if I am "religious", and yet there are so many sub-text questions that stem from just that one question. There are two parts in answering that question: helping people understand the difference between a religious lifestyle and a relationship with Christ, and how that is reflected.
When non-believers refer to believers as religious, in my experience, they think that we have a "better than thou" attitude, and all we do is live by a set of rules that dictate who is going to heaven and who is going to hell.
People often ask why we believe in God, or why we love him. When I think of how to answer that, I think back to when I accepted Christ in my life. I was only four years old when I lost my dad to cancer. I was always so sad, but my mom always comforted me with a scripture. She would quote the first part of Psalm 68:5 where it says that God would be a father to the fatherless. Being so young, I didn't really understand much about God, but I knew that he loved me enough to be a dad for me. I loved him and still do because he loved and still does love me. It's just like it says in 1 John 4:19, "We love because he first loved us." What people don't understand is when you love God, you want to live a better life. You want to serve him, and do your best to please him. However, somewhere along the way, people believed that you had to live by a religious law in order to be loved and accepted by Christ. Some of the earliest examples refer to the Pharisees. The Pharisees were religious teachers who were all about the law rather than living for Christ. It talks about this very thing in Matthew 15:1-9: Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat!" Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, 'Whatever help you might have received from me is a gift devoted to God,' he is not to 'honor his father' with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: 'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. they worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.' " This problem still exists today. People have been taught rules instead of love. Colossians 2:20-23 says: "Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: 'Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!' These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence." In these verses, God clearly states that you have freedom from human regulations when you live for Christ. Yet people still believe that you have to abide by certain rules to achieve salvation. The word of God says differently. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast." It is not about works, and this is what Jesus had to say about people who were talking the talk, but not walking the walk...Matthew 7:21-23 says, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.'
If all else fails, just let people know how much God loves them. Let them know that it's not religion that dictates who we are and how we act, but our love of Christ. John 3:16-17, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."
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