Some years ago Newsweek magazine featured a cover article titled, “Forget the Church: Follow Jesus” [1]. Ever since, numerous articles and YouTube lectures have featured the same mantra, most of the time under the slogan, “Leave religion to follow Jesus.” Organized religion, for these persons, has become the enemy so far as the spiritual realm is concerned.
This past week a pastoral colleague of mine spoke of one of his former students, once a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, who has now joined this strange movement. Now a hospital chaplain, this former pastor now regards organized religion as “just another way of paying one’s bills.” While still claiming to be a Seventh-day Adventist, this man claims religion is the big problem with too many Christians, and that Jesus—whatever, whoever that may be—is the answer.
Knowing his family, I can only imagine the pain his decision has likely caused his parents. His wife, also the child of a godly family I know, is pictured online beside her husband, dripping in jewelry. (One wonders how such outward show comports with the Biblical Jesus, who for our sakes wore a crown of thorns.)
Amorphous Spirituality
The problem with this kind of amorphous spirituality is that nature, and life in general, crave organization. Nothing in this world survives without order. If order isn’t established in one way, it will be through another. I think of the story I read many years ago of a teen-ager who saw himself as “growing up” by becoming a drug dealer, so he wouldn’t have to stay at home or “go to school and be bossed around.” Though I don’t know the end of this young man’s story, quite likely he soon learned that the underworld he chose to inhabit imposed its own order and rules on the life of its residents, and with much greater brutality than anything he had hitherto experienced in the normal thoroughfares of life.
I’m reminded of a pastor in my youth who publicly reflected on the growing popularity at the time of the “take doctrine, give me Jesus” way of thinking, now vastly more ubiquitous (and hurtful) than in those not-so-distant years. This pastor wondered aloud what these folks meant when speaking of “Jesus.” He asked, Are they speaking of Jesus being the eternal Son of God? Of His sacrifice for humanity’s sins? His virgin birth? His exemplary life? His substitutionary death? His bodily resurrection from the dead?
Don’t all of these qualify as doctrines? he wisely asked.
Many find it pleasing to speak of a “personal relationship” with Christ as the guide of their spiritual journey. But aren’t there rules which govern any healthy relationship, or even many unhealthy ones? Does one’s connection with Jesus have no practical impact on the choices of life? Even those Christians who may resent certain lifestyle injunctions to which one or another religious community adheres, still believe the Christian message has implications which affect the thinking and conduct of those holding thereto. Most of the time, such persons simply desire the freedom to discard those parameters of belief and behavior which happen to disturb their comfort level.
Even the most theologically liberal Christians believe in a certain set of rules, which would be difficult in any case to distinguish from religion. The problem arises when one starts exploring what we might describe as first principles. Without an objective, transcendent standard of right and wrong, such as the Bible, the only authority left to inform one’s spiritual worldview is personal preference, cultural trends, one or another intellectual paradigm, or the vagaries of experience. And once the cycles of history change, as invariably they will, the foundations of any agenda of human or social betterment will shift beneath the feet of their adherents, leaving them at the mercy of the age-old human quest for temporal pleasure and security for “me and mine.” The collapse of the “Now!” generation of the 1960s into the “”Me’ generation of the decades to follow bears painful witness to this reality.
The Jesus of Scripture
When folks insist on “leaving religion to follow Jesus,” one must inquire as to what Jesus they’re talking about. Too many attempt to fabricate a Jesus quite apart from the One depicted in the Bible. The Jesus of Scripture was clear that doing the will of His heavenly Father (Matt. 7:21), keeping His Father’s commandments (Matt. 19:17; Luke 10:25-28), comprised the conditions of eternal salvation and belonging to the faith community He came to establish. When tempted by Satan in the wilderness, He declared that man shall live “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). In a later exchange He said to His would-be followers, “If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed” (John 8:31).
Far from exuding the open-ended, all-embracing, unconditionally accepting spirituality of so many postmoderns, Jesus taught that “narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matt. 7:14). “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able” (Luke 13:24).
How do any of these tenets qualify as “non-religious”? When one reads the Gospel accounts, and elsewhere in the New Testament, it becomes increasingly difficult to view the Jesus there depicted as anything but very religious. The Biblical Jesus was certainly willing to forgive penitent sinners, but such reinstatement with God was plainly declared by Him to be conditional on such acts as the willingness to forgive those who have trespassed against us (Matt. 6:14-15). When addressing the adulterous woman thrown at His feet in the temple court, He declared, “Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more” (John 8:11).
Conclusion: Leave Religion to Follow Jesus?
In the end, life offers no escape from order, organization, and in the spiritual realm: religion. The only questions to be asked are: What shape will that religion assume? Who and what will set its agenda? Who and what will establish the guardrails of faith and practice?
For the true Christian, the only answer to these questions can be the written counsel of God (Isa. 8:20; Acts 17:11). Without this benchmark, one’s spirituality will inevitably drift hither and yon on the sea of culture, intellectual fashion, and the quest for experiential fulfillment. But with this benchmark, we can truly follow Jesus by abandoning those wrongful belief systems and destructive practices which both violate the parameters set by God’s Word and threaten true happiness in the here and now. Provided we are speaking of the Biblical Jesus, we cannot “leave religion” to follow Him, for the Biblical Jesus never crafted a spirituality which was not anchored to the Scriptures.
In Ellen White’s words, “All truth is to be received as the life of Jesus. Truth cleanses us from all impurity, and prepares the soul for Christ’s presence” [##2|Ellen G. White, Our High Calling, p. 208.##]. Indeed, the modern prophet declares elsewhere: “The whole Bible is a manifestation of Christ” [##3|——The Desire of Ages, p. 390.##].
REFERENCES
1. Andrew Sullivan, “Forget the Church, Follow Jesus,” Newsweek (cover article), April 2, 2012 https://www.google.com/search?q=Forget+the+Church+Follow+Jesus+Newsweek&sca_esv=ef7d28e0e6a9921a&sca_upv=1&udm=2&biw=610&bih=292&sxsrf=ADLYWIJ05gZ9pOU7eTJUMqBFLhlM5MVmTQ%3A1719613511819&ei=Rzh_ZpDIMaqRwbkPldeZiAw&ved=0ahUKEwjQh5fEq_-GAxWqSDABHZVrBsEQ4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=Forget+the+Church+Follow+Jesus+Newsweek&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiJ0ZvcmdldCB0aGUgQ2h1cmNoIEZvbGxvdyBKZXN1cyBOZXdzd2Vla0j-d1CQCFjrSXABeACQAQGYAaADoAHuLqoBCjAuMjUuOC4wLjG4AQPIAQD4AQGYAgCgAgCYAwCIBgGSBwCgB_oL&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#vhid=LTSD_NyF7ludFM&vssid=mosaic
2. Ellen G. White, Our High Calling, p. 208.
3. ----The Desire of Ages, p. 390.
Pastor Kevin Paulson holds a Bachelor’s degree in theology from Pacific Union College, a Master of Arts in systematic theology from Loma Linda University, and a Master of Divinity from the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He served the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for ten years as a Bible instructor, evangelist, and local pastor. He writes regularly for Liberty magazine and does script writing for various evangelistic ministries within the denomination. He continues to hold evangelistic and revival meetings throughout the North American Division and beyond, and is a sought-after seminar speaker relative to current issues in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He presently resides in Berrien Springs, Michigan