So I have heard so many people say that they are not into religion. That they just want the Gospel and no religion. Well, I disagree. First off, before I am called a heretic.. hehe, I want to make sure it is clear that I believe in the Gospel of Christ. That He is the Son of God, that He was perfect, He died, He rose again and if He trust Him to, He will pay the penalty for our sins. There are no works involved, so way to earn salvation. Okay, that said, I think that religion is supposed to play an important part in our lives. It is a set of beautiful traditions all pointing back to the Truth. Take a look at the Jewish holidays. They are there to tell the story of God and His people. We can´t trust that our performance in religion will get us anywhere, but I believe that God placed religous traditions in our lives for a reason and we need to stop rejecting that. For example, how beautiful are the prayers of our brothers in the Lord who lived hundreds of years ago (Rach, that´s for you!). I personally hope that I never stop loving the beauty of religous traditions.
I live near a long thin park called Parque Forestal. It's really quite a nice park and it has a long stretch of a lane for riding bikes or jogging. And since I have a fear of riding bikes in this city, I jog. It's really pleasent. I usually listen to radioDisney on my mp3 player and jog along to Jonas Brothers, Beyonce, or Julieta Venegas. Great stuff. Yesterday on my jog I noticed that the trees were beginning to change. Fall has finally arrived and I am glad for the change. But as I was jogging through the falling leaves, I began to think about how much I like fall. And I had this special moment when I realized that I want to be here in Santiago, jogging through this park for many falls to come. After the past few weeks of cultural adjustment being a little more painful than normal, this was a nice thought to have.
Comments
i think you're missing the word "not" in your last sentence...
i think what your friends mean, when they say that they don't want religion, is that they reject the form without the substance. what you're saying is that the form itself has great beauty and meaning. But certainly you'd agree that the form without the substance is hypocrisy.
I think this is what turns so many people away from different kinds of faith: that many practitioners of that faith can appear addicted to the form and have no internal substance.
your sym (svenska-yiddishe-mama)
And I totally agree, I think that form without substance is hypocrisy, but I also think that it is dangerous to loose the sense of history that many religous traditions give us. There are some people who say that they are just rejecting the form without substance, but others who literally don´t want the form. They want to only think about what God is right now, and not what God did in the past or what He will do in the future. And that is sad to me.