Dear Reader…

Growing up, I was taught that there are certain ‘things’ that a person has to do to earn favor with God. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t watch certain movies… don’t! In other words, a large part of Christian discipleship was focused on the negation of ‘things’ rather than the freedom that comes from being released from the captivity of religion. The great “don’t” that my Christian community focused on when I was giving my life back to Jesus as a teenager was secular music. Now, I do have to say that forsaking secular music was a good thing for me at the time because it allowed me to set my mind on “things above.” However, eventually I started looking at my other friends musical genre choices and it became easy to cast secret stones of judgment. The negation had led to a religious mentality of picking who was “in” and who was “out.” This is because I chose an overall perspective of faith that is described in Religious No More, (by Mark Baker) that is called a “Bounded Group.” I drew an image like this in my book as I read this section…

There are several things to point out about this first image.  Notice that there is a clear wall that has been built to contain those who are “in” and to exclude those who are “out.”  The space between the dividing wall is where religious ideals are, and for many people this is where God dwells.  God is held captive within the walls of religion and as long as we stay inside these walls (remember: “Don’ts”), then we are part of the elite “in” group.  In this view, everything we do must be focused on how to protect the “wall” that has boxed religion/God in, so that we have security in our categories. [Read more...]