What is religion? Here is a good definition: "an institution to express belief in a divine power."
I am not a seeker after religion. I am seeking God. Our religion must never become a substitute for our personal relationship with God.
The institutionalism and denominationalism we often see, even in legitimate faiths, can be an obstruction in our path to finding God; just as adherents to a particular faith can be disappointing to those who truly desire a relationship with God.
Someone said, "Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living but tradition is the living faith of the dead." We can learn much from our forefathers but there is a trap to be avoided in clinging to dead ideas instead of a living person.
Here is the problem; we need to focus on a hero who is untarnished - that is Jesus Christ alone. No one else even comes close to his perfect example. All men have feet of clay and that is a fact.
Yes it is true that the church is full of hypocrites just as a hospital is full of sick people. I am sick and so are you. That does not mean that what we believe is false or that church is useless, but it does mean that no one is perfectly consistent in practicing their faith. We are all in a battle to become what God wants of us.
If a person hides behind the skirts of their faith and is insincere in their daily effort to pick up their cross to follow Jesus, they are not worthy to carry the name of the one they follow.
I am sick but aggressively seeking the cure. I am not the Messiah. I am just a follower who wishes to touch the hem of His garment.
