Religion, church, and more. (Opinion)

I feel compelled to go into depth about my opinion of religion and church in this post, because I feel I was misunderstood in my previous one in respect to my definition of marriage. First off, I think it is most necessary to give a formal definition of religion, because when I think of this word I think of its denotation rather than its connotation. A religion is a set of beliefs and practices by which a person lives. This can be “spiritual” or “unspiritual.” Someone is religious simply by doing the things that they believe work. Thus, everyone has their own religion. When one thinks about organized religion, that is the realm of the belief sets that mass amounts of people practice together and agree upon. So, in a sense, a marriage is an act of religion, minus the orginization. There is the commitment to religiously love and be loyal to one another for life. However, I believe the point I was truly misunderstood on was when I said the only legitimate marriage is between followers of Christ. I was not referring to organized institutions meddling in peoples’ lives commanding them to do this or that. (For some reason people think this the definition of church and religion. Um, no, it is not.) I was talking about two individuals who know the Lord personally and let Him lead them to each other, minus other human beings telling them who they should marry. I said this because God knows every single detail about everyone and their prospective spouses. Without Him as the focus no one knows what true love is, because God is Love. Perhaps it is best to say that this is a religious belief, but it is not the type of religion society connotes. It seems people think of religion as a set of rules and regulations by which everyone is judged and should be forced to follow. That most certainly is not religion. The difference is that someone’s real religion includes the beliefs they willing follow and act out every day. I was once told, “Your actions are the reflection of what you believe.” After thinking on it I realized the truth of those words. (There are some issues that I brought up that could seem to contradict in light of Christ’s teachings, but that goes beyond the scope of this blog. Call them out if you think you seem them I’ll be happy to address them in detail in other posts.)

Now I’m going to share my thoughts on the word “church.” Honestly, I do not know how much of the population actually knows what this word really means. The definition of the church is the body of Christ. The church is not a building, it is the total congregation, throughout the entire world, of people who have an intimate relationship with Christ, God, Holy Spirit, Abba, Yahweh, Lord, all of the for and after, etc. The church is the bride of that will be married to Christ, the bridegroom. This is another reason for my marriage definition, because marriage is in truth a representation of this event. The union of God and the ones He Loves. (That is the ones He Loves that choose to love Him. Many are those He Loves who do not choose Him. I would like to say, to not choose eternity with the only one who is good is to choose eternity with all that is not good. I say that to enlighten not to judge.)

I would just like to say don’t take all that I say at face value, search out the truth for yourself. I know and believe what I do through doing just that. I believe in absolute truth. That means there is one truth for everything, and that a person cannot simply decided what is true simply because they want it to be true. This means people are wrong until they encounter or are taught the truth. I do not think everyone has it right and I am not claiming to know everything. I believe everyone is wrong to a certain extent, some more than others, because no one knows everything, except God. Nevertheless, people have a tendency to think their beliefs are completely correct. (Yep, me too.) I say there is a line that is drawn in existence between true and false. Until the end, no one knows what side they are on, thus, faith is the walk of life.