Time to redefine "religion"

How then shall we live? Isn’t that the question? Hasn’t this always been the question before humankind? How then shall we live? For what purpose? With what sense of meaning?
Today, Jesus’ answer seems to be: Religion. 
Wait, what?  Really? 
​That doesn’t sound like Jesus. That doesn’t seem like  a very Jesus-y answer.
The meaning of life, the purpose of life is:  religion? This is how we shall live?

Well, it depends on what is meant by the word: Religion.
If we use the dictionary definition that reads: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices …..well, then, maybe not. But, I don’t think that was Jesus’ definition of religion….not if we listen carefully.  James tells us Jesus’ view: Religion that is pure and undefiled before the Source of all Being is this: to care for the orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself pure while living in this world.

Let’s unpack that word, pure, first of all. In the Hebrew context, in Jesus’ context, pure means to be undivided, unadulterated. It isn’t about sexual behavior or physical cleanliness—in fact, it’s about the state of your heart.  To be pure, or unstained, was all about having an undivided heart. To live a life focused on one thing—-to have loyalty to one purpose. Of course, for Jesus this is to live a life focused on God and a heart loyal to Love because God is Love and love is God.  Love is our entire purpose: 24/7, 365 days a year. 

That takes me back to the definition of “religion”; this word that has come to mean: to strictly adhere to doctrine, dogma and church practices, and if you don’t, then you are not “very religious.”  The word “religion” now has such a negative connotation that folx, even Christians, who are focused on a way of life that is centered on Love often say: Well, I am  spiritual, but I am not very religious. But, Beloved, I believe that our understanding, and our usage, of this word “religion” is the problem.

The word “religion” comes from Latin, but there are three possible root words: relego, religare, and re-eligare.  Clear as mud, right?

Relego means “to re-read.”
Religare means “to fast or to bind, to tie fast to”
Re-eligare means “to choose again”

I love that we have all three of these options for they all hold truth and beauty.
What if religion, for us, becomes the understanding that our purpose and meaning is to re-read. Re-read everything. To re-read every person we meet with Love. To re-read every situation we encounter with love. To re-read our beliefs, our processes, our systems with Love as our critic. To look in the mirror and re-read what we see with Love’s eyes, Love’s measure.  Relego, re-read.

Or what if  we understand, as Jesus reminds us to do over and over, that religion is really all about re-eligare—-choosing again. Religion is about turning around, repentance, choosing a do-over, a second chance. It’s about turning away from beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors that hurt others and choosing love again. Choosing life again. Choosing the Common Good over personal profit, again and again and again. That religion is the understanding and belief that we have the ability to learn to choose differently, or choose again, when we have failed Love’s commands, Love’s way of being. Re-eligare, to choose again.

And, of course, there’s religare—to fasten or to bind to, to tie fast to. What if being religious is really about being so fastened to Love that we can choose no other? That we naturally care for those in need, those whom life has left destitute, those whose security has been stripped by death, by warfare, by poverty? What if we tie Love so fastly around our hearts, our vision, our purpose that Love flows from our mouths and justice streams from our hearts and kindness is our every action?

Because here’s the thing that Jesus’s life—this life and death that is the perfect law in human form, Love incarnate—here’s the thing Jesus’ life shows us: Love is the transformative filter that changes everything. Love is the transformative filter that moves us from beings of reactions to beings of response. It is Love’s filter within us that  transforms hate into forgiveness and hurt into redemption. And, Beloved, we know—-we are witnesses to the truth— that when our Love filter is deactivated or when it is missing: devastation is the result. Warfare and injustice are the outcome. Instead of purity—undivided hearts whose purpose is Love—our hearts become stained by the world and we end up with division and name-calling; we diminish ourselves into becoming “us versus them” instead of becoming E pluribus Unum: "from the Many, One" that God, that Love, calls us to be. That Love created us to be.

As Hebrew scholar and theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: “It is customary to blame secularism for the eclipse of religion in modern society. But it would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive and insipid. When faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain, when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than the voice of compassion—----its message becomes meaningless.” 

​Beloved, it is time that we—by how we live and by who we are becoming as the Beloved Community—it is time for us to redefine religion.