RELIGION AND RITUALS
Sometimes we hear people running down the concept of religion. “Jesus didn’t come to bring us a religion,” they say, “but he wants to have a relationship with us.” Other times, we hear people say they are “spiritual” but not “religious.” Both of these are based on an impoverished understanding of what religion is — as if it simply consisted of unimportant rituals or arbitrary doctrines.
But
real religion involves neither of these. It doesn’t contain arbitrary
doctrines, but truths that have been revealed by God. It also involves genuine
relationships with God, with Christ and with our fellow human beings.
Thus
St. James tells us that “religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the
Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep
oneself unstained by the world.” Having a real relationship with God means not
only loving him, but loving our neighbors, as well — especially our less
fortunate neighbors.
Yet
it is possible to become too focused on external rituals. This happened with
Jesus’ critics, who faulted his disciples for not washing their hands before
they ate, in violation of the custom of their day. But this custom was not
based on God’s teaching. It isn’t found in the Mosaic Law. Jesus thus rebuked
his critics for “teaching as doctrines human precepts.”
Like
the prophets before him, Jesus made it clear that moral values take precedence
over mere ritual observances: “From within people, from their hearts, come evil
thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit,
licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from
within, and they defile.”
This
is not to say that rituals are unimportant. Ritual appears in every culture,
showing that it’s built into human nature. Thus God gave Israel rituals
alongside moral commandments in the Old Testament Law. This Law was a model of
wisdom for the people of the ancient Near East, and by observing it, the
Israelites would show “wisdom and intelligence to the nations, who will hear of
all these statutes and say, ‘This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent
people.’”
God
has ordained different rituals for us today, but ritual — together with the
moral imperatives that flow from the ethic of love — is an important part of
how we relate to God.
Rather
than talking down religion, we should recognize and embrace the concept, for it
is a biblical one. In doing so, we should embrace the impulse for ritual that
God built into human nature, but we should also recognize the transcendent
importance of love. This is taught in both the Old and the New Testaments. When
Jesus identified the first and second great commandments as love of God and
love of neighbor, he was quoting from the Law of Moses.
We
thus should “be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.”
And we always should strive to be one who “walks blamelessly and does justice;
who thinks the truth in his heart,” for “whoever does these things shall never
be disturbed.”
No comments:
Post a Comment