Religion is twisted spiritual truth. The open invitation from God to man is in every case twisted by religion to make spirituality a religious fiefdom. Instead of the people being the focus of spirituality, religion demands to be the dispensers of that spirituality instead of or in addition to God. No wonder that doesn’t work!
Jesus tells
us the truth about spirituality in Matthew 7: 7 & 8. When speaking to the
people he said the following.
“Ask and it
will be given to you; seek and you will find (it): knock and the door will be
opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; those who seek find; and to
those who knock, the door (to spirituality) will be opened.”
No buts, no
priesthood, no religious club, no approved ritual, no religious dogma, no list
of does and don’ts, they all cannot replace the open invitation of Jesus. Just open your heart and look for eternity,
it’s all around us, we just have to knock, ask and seek our own given inheritance.
Can we
respect a God who appoints the few to manage spirituality for the rest of
us? No way, since God is who he or she
is, his spirituality is open to all. The
disciples that Jesus gathered around him were not to be spiritual managers,
they were gathered to assist Jesus in advertising eternity.
Jesus goes
on to say in verses 9, 10 & 11.
“Which of
you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a
snake? If you, then, though you are
evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your
Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"
Spirituality
is just that simple. Jesus was
constantly harassed by the leaders of the established religion of his time and
place. They had rightly concluded that
Jesus was a threat to their supposed control over the spirituality of the
people. They said, this uneducated upstart
from the hinterlands is a fraud, his teachings cannot overshadow our 1000- year
religious bureaucracy, God’s way is complicated, the people need us to show
them the way.
Jesus was
very familiar with the ways of their religion.
In response,
Jesus said in verse 12.
“So in
everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up
the Law and the Prophets (their religion).”
We don’t need, nor did the people of Jesus’s time, need a religious bureaucracy to direct the spiritual path of the people. What we need is to ask, seek and find the simple spiritual truth. A truth that when found will mean that we treat all others the way we would want to be treated.
A simple understanding that is as foreign to our world as it was in the
time of Jesus.
G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca
