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If you assumed that this series about “faith” is an invitation to go deeper into religion, then I hope by now you see I’m offering you much more. I left the business of religion in 2012 when my fundamentalist mind finally realized the healing but subversive message of the Bible, that when truly following Christ, we are led out of religion. World religions may offer people a helpful structure, community and tradition, but it’s a popular and unbiblical mistake to conclude that religion gets us to God.

Religion has never saved a single soul in all of human history.

This series is an invitation to freedom. I’ve often said, freedom isn’t having no captors, or doing whatever we want, freedom is to choose our captor. Our world lives in bondage to many brutal captors, because we fail to realize that we’re already enslaved at a deeper level than we realize. Thus, when we are offered the freedoms of success, money, sex, power, or health, we fail to see the hook in the bait. We can test this by examining those who have bowed and sacrificed their life to possess these so-called freedoms, and yet they cannot flee the despair of new levels of captivity.

The Bible’s counter-intuitive path to freedom isn’t religion, but Christ following. As Christ rejected Satan’s offer to possess “all the kingdoms of the world”, so we can do likewise. Freedom from institutional authority (éxousian) means we don’t “make a name for ourself” but instead discover our true name, hidden in God…given by our Maker, who alone as authority to say “who we are.”

So why don’t more of us want this? Why is our world so focused on identity apart from God?

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30)

Pride is a prison, not a festival. We scroll through the proud promoting “their name” they’ve concocted for themselves. This costume is a delusion, the opposite of what Jesus instructs us to be in Matthew 5:48 (télios– authentic, real, perfect, initiated). Pride produces certainty, placing faith in oneself instead of God. Pride over-identifies with one’s pseudonym…fake ID…the mask given by institutional authority. Life is a series of masks, tempting us toward self-definition. The first is family, then friends, education, vocation, and now today we reach religion.

Ignore this if you will…but please understand that this message is rare in our world, especially in the religious industrial complex. For some, this will be your only life-line. Big Religion obscures this Good News by convincing people to follow religion instead of Christ. This is proven biblically by how religion rejected Jesus’ message… It still does today. Be warned, freedom from religion is harder than freedom from family or vocation.

Notice how Jesus subverts religion’s authority:

1. Jesus was baptized in the desert, 21 miles outside of the temple. (Matthew 3:13-17)
2. Jesus unrolls the scroll and proclaims that the messianic prophesy of Isaiah 61 is fulfilled (Luke 4:18)
3. Jesus first miracle subverts the religious custom of water purification in order to join a gathering.(John 2:6)
4. Jesus tells an invalid that if he breaks the sabbath by “picking up his bed” that he would be healed.(John 5:7-9)
5. Jesus tells the religious leaders they don’t know God but instead have Satan as their father.(John 8:44)
6. The religious leaders conspired on how to kill Jesus (Matthew 12:14, John 3:6)

These are just a few obvious examples, but the entire Bible (Old and New testaments) continuously reveals that Christ following (subversion) is the only way a person can be free from religion. (More on this next week).

Some might be wondering: “Hey Keven, I’m an atheist or agnostic, or I don’t subscribe to any religion, so how can you say that I am somehow captive to religion?” I get this question often. Once we understand institutional authority (éxousian) and our fake ID, then we can understand the true definition of religion. Religion follows faith. As we trust in institutional authority, we become religious. When we over-identify with any institution as the means to gain something from the world, we’re performing religion. This expands our definition from mainline religion to include the “éxousian” of sports, business, politics, science and the arts. We turn everything into a religion, because we bow down and worship anything that gives us the life we think we want.

Subversion is not elimination. We can be in religion (any of them) but not be of them. Subversion is unearthing its power “over” us, by our placing our trust in an alternative power, namely God, to whom Jesus is leading us back. Freedom from religion then, is the freedom to benefit from the good which religion may offer us (if we desire to participate), while having a deeper trust in God (as Christ did) that even outside of religion, our life in God remains healthy and in tact.

Are you free from religion?

What happens if we step away for six months? Is anything from God actually lost? No, but if our faith withers, then we can know our faith is in religion, not God. If we are marginalized, looked down upon, shamed or threatened, then the “true colors” of religion are showing, and it becomes clear that we need freedom. When literally nothing religion can say or do erodes our confidence of who we are in God, then we are free. If religion marginalized Jesus, it will marginalize you. If religion likes and values you, then your freedom and identity is not entirely in Christ.

“If the world (authority systems) hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.” (John 15:18)

We become free from religion in the same way we become free from any of Satan’s institutional authorities. We have to get over our need for them. Remember, this is a pernicious trade. We are “over” our family, friends, vocations, and religions when we don’t need them to give us something, to make us feel a certain way, validate us, give us relevance, security, or a fictional existence. When we give up our will entirely to the will of God, then we become free.

All of Satan’s authorities will ultimately kill us, that is the true part of us, and that includes religion. As we follow Christ, keep in mind he’s leading us to bear our own cross. We don’t live for this world, we live for God in this world. If Jesus could say the following words to the leaders of his religion, then we must be able to hear him say it to the leaders of ours:

“You (religious) are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar (falsehood/pseudo) and the father of lies (fake ID).” John 8:44

I know this sounds horribly wrong, but I pray you’ll do the deep soul work of examining if it’s true. If you hear a voice calling you into freedom…follow it…and don’t play the cynic.